Fatty liver more common in MAFLD than NAFLD

Patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) see higher rates of fatty liver than those with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a recent study has found.

The study included 950 participants (median age 52 years, 42.3 percent men) who had accomplished a resident health survey. Elastography assessments deemed 273 participants to have MAFLD while 234 were diagnosed with NAFLD; 204 participants had both.

Obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysregulation, dietary habits, and the FibroScan-aspartate aminotransferase score, among other parameters, were compared between MAFLD and NAFLD patients.  

Findings revealed that the proportion of patients with MAFLD in the fatty liver was higher than that with NAFLD (88.1 percent vs 75.5 percent).

“In participants with fatty liver, those with MAFLD had a higher proportion than those with NAFLD,” the researchers explained, suggesting that “the criteria of MAFLD could identify participants with liver fibrosis more accurately than those with NAFLD.”

Subsequently, they looked at the prevalence of individual risk factors for MAFLD. Metabolic dysregulation was the most common, present in 87.1 percent of MAFLD patients. This was followed by obesity (81.0 percent), while only a few had diabetes (13.6 percent). Of note, 38.8 percent of participants had both obesity and metabolic dysregulation, and this combination was most frequently observed out of all other factor combinations.

According to the researchers, chiefly using both obesity and metabolic dysregulation, combined with other risk factors for MAFLD, could be useful in identifying fatty liver and liver fibrosis.