Global NAFLD prevalence rose 50% over 20 years, with hotspots in North Africa, Middle East
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. —Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease prevalence rose more than 50% globally from 1990 to 2019, with African and Middle Eastern regions identified as hotspots, according to data presented at ACG Annual Scientific Meeting.
“We did this study because we noticed that NAFLD has been increasing in many countries around the world,” Yichen Wang, MD, MSc, an internist at Mercy Internal Medicine Service at Trinity Health of New England, in Springfield, Massachusetts, said in the presentation.
Due to concerns that NAFLD “is causing an emerging global epidemic,” the researchers gathered data on cases of NAFLD from the Global Burden of Disease Study, provided by University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in collaboration with WHO, which records annual data on the incidence, mortality and disability-adjusted life years among 204 countries and territories grouped into five sociodemographic indexes (SDI) categories.
The researchers found the prevalence of NAFLD was 561.4 million (prevalence rate, 10.5%) in 1990 and 1,235.7 million in 2019 (prevalence rate, 16%) — a 121% increase in the number of cases and 52.3% increased prevalence rate.
Wang said they were surprised by NAFLD incidence per region. “The high SDI region does not have the highest prevalence of NAFLD,” Wang said. “Countries with the high middle or middle SDI had the highest prevalence rate. Similarly, the morbidity rates and socially adjusted life disability life year rates were highest in the middle SDI countries.”
Specifically, Wang said, “North African and Middle Eastern regions are disease hotspots for NAFLD as measured by prevalence rate, followed by East and Southeast Asia and South America.”
United Arab Emirates had the highest prevalence (39.5%), followed by Qatar (39.3%), Bahrain (37.1%), Kuwait (36.1%), Saudi Arabia (33.1%) and Egypt (30.8%).
“The geographic disparity in NAFLD is likely multifactorial, possibly including population, genetic and lifestyle differences,” he added, due to lifestyle changes in the areas that occurred within the 30 years of the study analysis.
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Wang Y, et al. The global landscape of nonalcoholic fatty acid liver disease: Results from the Global Burden of Disease Study, 1990-2019. Presented at: ACG Annual Scientific Meeting; Oct. 21-26, 2022; Charlotte, N.C. (hybrid meeting).
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