Association between atherosclerosis-related indicators and fatty liver: a population-based observational study

Fatty liver has been proven to be closely related to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), but there are not sufficient studies on its correlation with atherosclerosis-related index.

The objective of this study was to determine the potential association of atherosclerosis-related indicators with fatty liver among a Japanese population by a cross-sectional analysis.

Medical data of 909 Japanese individuals age range 24-84 years from the Dryad database were enrolled into our analysis. These participants have received a physical examination with a standardized questionnaire, blood test and imaging examination. We obtained atherosclerosis-related indicators including lipid profile, triglyceride glucose index (TyG), atherogenic index (AI) and brachial--ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV)-max. Fatty liver was confirmed by standardized abdominal ultrasound.

Among these 909 participants, the prevalence of fatty liver was 28.93%. Our curve analysis supported the significant associations of AI, TyG and baPWV-max with fatty liver. Our multivariate logistic regression consistently demonstrated that AI [1.76 (1.49, 2.07), < 0.0001], TyG [2.71 (1.96, 3.75), < 0.0001] and baPWV-max [2.71 (1.96, 3.75), < 0.0001] were significantly associated with fatty liver when age, sex, BMI, systolic BP, diastolic BP, current smoker and exercise were adjusted for. Furthermore, ROC curve indicated that TyG had a higher AUC value of 0.7660 than AI (AUC = 0.7547) and baPWV-max (AUC = 0.6223) on detecting the presence of fatty liver. TyG index exceeding 8.2611 indicated the occurrence of fatty liver with a high sensitivity (80.99%) and specificity (60.84%).

Our results suggested that TyG value was significantly and positively correlated with fatty liver in the Japanese population, as well as AI and baPWV-max. When TyG value was more than 8.2611, this indicator showed a better predictive value for fatty liver than the other three traditional biomarkers.