The association of dietary phytochemical index and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Consumption of phytochemical-rich foods relates to the prevention of chronic diseases. In this study we assessed the dietary phytochemical index (PI) in metabolic parameters, liver enzymes, and severity of fibrosis among nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 210 patients with NAFLD. Fibrosis-4 index (FLB4), nonalcoholic fatty liver disease fibrosis score (NFS), FBS, lipids profile, AST, ALT, ALP, and GGT were measured. PI was calculated through the information obtained from a validated semi-quantitative food frequency. Multiple regression models were used to estimate mean difference changes in the evaluated variables associated with various dietary PI. Participants' mean ± SD of age and BMI were 39.23 ± 10.52 and 24.40 ± 2.64, respectively. We found that DPI is inversely associated with serum TG, TC, and LDL-C and directly associated with serum HDL-C and a higher score in DPI is associated with lower scores in NFS and FIB-4. Multivariate linear regression showed that there is an inverse association between DPI and AST, ALT, ALP, GGT, NFS, and FIB-4. Higher dietary PI could impact on reduction of NAFLD progression and improvement of metabolic parameters.