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Updated: Mar 2, 2026
Novel In Vivo Micro-Computed Tomography Imaging Techniques for Assessing the Progression of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Published on: March 24, 2023
Fatty liver as a risk factor for progression from metabolically healthy to metabolically abnormal in non-overweight
Yoshitaka Hashimoto1, Masahide Hamaguchi2, Takuya Fukuda1
1Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto, Japan.
Purpose:
Recent studies identified that metabolically abnormal non-obese phenotype is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. However, little is known about risk factor for progression from metabolically healthy non-overweight to metabolically abnormal phenotype. We hypothesized that fatty liver had a clinical impact on progression from metabolically healthy non-overweight to metabolically abnormal phenotype.
Methods:
In this retrospective cohort study, 14,093 Japanese (7557 men and 6736 women), who received the health-checkup program from 2004 to 2012, were enrolled. Overweight and obesity were defined as body mass index 23.0-25.0 and ≥25.0 kg/m2. Four metabolic factors (impaired fasting glucose, hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia and low high density lipoprotein-cholesterol concentration) were used for definition of metabolically healthy (less than two factors) or metabolically abnormal (two or more). We divided the participants into three groups: metabolically healthy non-overweight (9755 individuals, men/women = 4290/5465), metabolically healthy overweight (2547 individuals, 1800/747) and metabolically healthy obesity (1791 individuals, 1267/524). Fatty liver was diagnosed by ultrasonography.
Results:
Over the median follow-up period of 5.3 years, 873 metabolically healthy non-overweight, 512 metabolically healthy overweight and 536 metabolically healthy obesity individuals progressed to metabolically abnormal. The adjusted hazard risks of fatty liver on progression were 1.49 (95% confidence interval 1.20-1.83, p = 0.005) in metabolically healthy non-overweight, 1.37 (1.12-1.66, p = 0.002) in metabolically healthy overweight and 1.38 (1.15-1.66, p < 0.001) in metabolically healthy obesity, after adjusting for age, sex, alcohol, smoking, exercise, impaired fasting glucose, hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, low high density lipoprotein-cholesterol concentration, and abdominal obesity.
Conclusions:
Fatty liver is an independent risk factor for progression from metabolically healthy status to metabolically abnormal phenotype, even in non-overweight individuals.
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