THURSDAY, Feb. 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Women with fatty liver disease related to alcohol consumption have almost twice the risk for dying within a certain time period than men with the same condition, according to a letter to the editor published in the February issue of the Journal of Hepatology.
Hongwei Ji, from the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University in China, and colleagues used data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (1988 to 1994; 10,007 participants) to examine prevalence and prognosis differences in steatotic liver disease (SLD) phenotypes by sex. Using the revised SLD nomenclature, the analysis included 1,461 participants with metabolic dysfunction-associated SLD (MASLD), 225 with metabolic dysfunction-associated and alcohol-related liver disease (MetALD), 105 with ALD, 180 with other types of SLD, and 8,036 with no SLD.
The researchers found that MASLD, MetALD, and ALD prevalence in men was 18.5 percent, 3.2 percent, and 1.7 percent, respectively, while the corresponding prevalence rates in women were 10.3 percent, 1.2 percent, and 0.3 percent. MASLD was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality for either sex. MetALD was associated with a higher risk for all-cause mortality in women (hazard ratio, 1.83), but not in men. In both sexes, the presence of ALD was significantly associated with all-cause mortality, but the magnitude was greater in women than men (hazard ratios, 3.49 versus 1.89). When considering SLD phenotypes in putative order of etiologic severity (i.e., MASLD, MetALD, then ALD), there was not a significant sex difference in prevalence across worsening phenotypes, but there was a significant sex difference in mortality risk.
“These findings are especially concerning in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which alcohol use and related death, particularly in women, has increased,” coauthor Alan Kwan, M.D., from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said in a statement.
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