Original contributionA comparison of the fibrotic potential of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and chronic hepatitis C☆
Section snippets
Study population
Patients with histologically proven NAFLD who underwent liver biopsy for abnormal liver function tests between the years 2000 and 2007 were included. NAFLD was defined as the presence of steatosis greater than 20% in the absence of alcohol consumption (no more than 20 g/d for females and 30 g/d for males) and of any other cause of chronic liver disease including drug-induced liver disease [18]. Chronic hepatitis C was defined as the presence of HCV RNA in serum by polymerase chain reaction in
Correlations between the area of fibrosis and the different staging systems
The characteristics of the study population are described in Table 1. Because of the matching procedure, the mean age and the sex ratio were similar between groups. In the HCV group, 10 patients had 5% or less steatosis, whereas 60 patients had no steatosis. In the NAFLD group, 3 patients had a NAS score of 2 or less, 36 patients of 3 or 4, and 31 patients of 5 or more. In the entire population, there was a significant (P < .001) stepwise increase in the area of fibrosis according to the
Discussion
This study provides further insight into insulin resistance-related liver injury by demonstrating that NAFLD carries the potential for fibrotic scar deposition to the same extent as other established causes of severe liver disease, such as chronic hepatitis C. Despite the description of advanced histologic fibrosis stages in cohorts of NAFLD patients [3], [18], the general perception is that NAFLD is a disease of milder fibrotic severity. This could hold true as histologic staging systems are
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Professor Pierre Bedossa for helpful comments.
We thank Janet Ratziu for English language assistance.
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Cited by (0)
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The authors declare having no conflict of interest related to the conduct of this study.
- 1
See Appendix A.