This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

High-risk factors help predict NAFLD in elderly patients

Factors such as BMI, hemoglobin, fasting blood glucose and triglycerides predicted the onset of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in patients older than 60 years, according to results of a prospective study.

“The identification of high-risk subjects of NAFLD is much more valuable than diagnosing NAFLD,” the researchers wrote. “Early indications of subjects at high risk for NAFLD onset helps to prevent the development of NAFLD by primary intervention. Meanwhile, a number of studies have shown that the prevalence of NAFLD increases with age.”

The researchers recruited 3,378 NAFLD-free patients between January 2009 and January 2014. There were 2,310 men and 1,068 women. The patients were separated into a training set (n = 2,225) and a validation set (n = 1,126) and followed for 2 years. The patients’ clinical and laboratory data, height, BMI, smoking and alcohol consumption and biomechanical measures were recorded and all patients underwent an ultrasonographic examination.

At the end of follow-up, 440 patients developed NAFLD. Of these, 287 were men, 153 were women, 296 were a part of the training set and 144 were a part of the validation set. There were no significant differences between the training and validation sets.

In the training set, the researchers found that BMI, hemoglobin, fasting blood glucose and triglycerides were significantly different between the patients who developed NAFLD and those who did not. These were identified as predictive factors of NAFLD and the researchers calculated a formula for estimating a patient’s risk score.

A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to calculate the risk score in which –2.88 was the low cut-off point and –1.26 was the high cut-off point. Five percent of the patients in the low-risk group (R –2.88), 11% in the moderate-risk group (–2.88 < R –1.26) and 30% in the high-risk group (R > –1.26) developed NAFLD.

“The application of this model in clinical work will help elderly adults to prevent NAFLD and further complications by lifestyle intervention,” the researchers wrote. “Elderly adults would benefit from the management of BMI, hemoglobin, fasting blood glucose as well as triglycerides. Most importantly, the risk classification of subjects by the model provided clear criteria for the intervention of these parameters.” – by Talitha Bennett

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.