Factors associated or related to with pathological severity of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
BACKGROUND
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been more and more often regarded as a serious disorder, because nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a part of NAFLD, may progress to the end stage of liver disease. Though an advanced age, obesity, diabetes mellitus (DM) etc. being not infrequent conditions in Korea, are known to exacerbate the severity of this disease, there are only a few Korean reports on this subject. The purpose of this study is to identify possible factors that might add up to the pathological severity of this disorder in Korean patients.


METHODS
Of 60 patients with steatosis found at liver biopsy, 43 NAFLD patients were reviewed retrospectively after exclusion of other liver diseases.


RESULTS
The cases of steatosis were mild, moderate, and severe in 9. 10, and 24 patients, respectively. The degree of necroinflammatory activity was mild, moderate, and severe in 33, 9, and 1 patients, respectively. There were no established factors directly related to these classes. As to fibrosis, the cases were classified as none, mild, moderate, severe, and cirrhotic in 9, 11, 16, 7, and 0 patients, respectively. The stage of fibrosis correlated with the age (p < 0.001), BMI (body mass index) (p = 0.032), and the platelet count (p = 0.009), but the presence of NASH was associated only with BMI (p = 0.002) and obesity (p = 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
It seems that there are no factors that are directly related to the degree of steatosis or necroinflammatory activity. BMI seems to be a unique factor directly related to both the severity of fibrosis and the presence of NASH. The age and the platelet count are factors that are directly related to the degree of fibrosis but not to the presence of NASH.
Park
Kyung Sik
KS
Department of Internal Medicine, Keimyung University School of Medicine, Daegu, Korea. seenae99@dsmc.or.kr
Lee
Yeong Seok
YS
Park
Heo Won
HW
Seo
Sang Hyuck
SH
Jang
Byung Guk
BG
Hwang
Jun Young
JY
Cho
Kwang Bum
KB
Hwang
Jae Seok
JS
Ahn
Sung Hoon
SH
Kang
Yu Na
YN
Kim
Gap Chul
GC
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015992:Body Mass Index; D005234:Fatty Liver / Q000097:blood / Q000145:classification / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D010976:Platelet Count; D011379:Prognosis; D012372:ROC Curve; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D012720:Severity of Illness Index