Incidenţa asocierii sindromului metabolic la pacienţii cu ficat gras non-alcoolic

Abstract

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and metabolic syndrome (SM) have become major health problems in many countries of the world. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to evaluate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome components in patients diagnosed with non-alcoholic liver disease and hospitalized at the ASTRA Internal Medicine Ward of the Clinical Hospital in Braşov. From July to December 2008, as many as 1010 patients have been admitted and evaluated retrospectively, of whom 228 were diagnosed with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease on the basis of certain ecographic criteria concerning specific biochemical parameters (sugar level, triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol, transaminases), as well as anthropometric ones (waist circumference, BMI); the metabolic syndrome was diagnosed according to the AHA/NHLB2005 criteria. Of all the patients in our study, 22.57% were diagnosed with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, predominantly female patients (153, i.e., 67.10%). The patients diagnosed with NAFLD presented associated metabolic syndrome criteria as follows: 50.43% associated one or two metabolic syndrome criteria, while 49.57% associated three, four, or five such criteria of definition. The patients diagnosed with metabolic syndrome (those with a minimum of three associated criteria) also present, in decreasing order, the following associations: - hypertension + obesity + triglycerides >150mg/dl – 34.78% - hypertension + diabetes mellitus + triglycerides > 150mg/dl – 28.98% - hypertension + obesity + diabetes mellitus – 26.08% Metabolic Syndrome and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease seem to be strongly connected to one another in virtue of certain physio-pathological mechanisms that require further investigation and shall be confirmed in the upcoming studies. What our research has shown is that there can be an association of at least one metabolic syndrome criterion with an NAFLD criterion. Only the future will tell whether NAFLD can become a possible criterion of definition in the diagnosis of SM.