The relationship between 10 anthropometric measures and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease: among United States population: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2017–2018

Abstract

Abstract Background MAFLD is a rapidly progressive chronic liver disease approximately 1/3 of adults in the United States have fatty liver. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between 10 anthropometric measures and the risk of MAFLD using the American National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Methods Overall 3702 participants were included in this study. MAFLD was defined as hepatic steatosis with one or more of the following: (1) overweight or obesity (body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2), (2) type 2 diabetes, or (3) two or more other metabolic risk abnormalities. The anthropometric measures included weight, hip, WC, BMI, BRI, BAI, WTHR, WHTR, ABSI, and conicity index. The relationship between anthropometric measures and MAFLD was investigated using survey-weighted logistic regression, and stratified by sex and ages. Result When different indexes were used as continuous variables, the odds ratio (OR) is basically between 1.01–1.08. When different indexes were used as categorical variables (divided into trisection), WHTR per SE had the highest OR 20.166 (95%CI:12.131–33.523), followed was WC per SE with OR 19.472 (95%CI: 13.046–29.064), BRI per SE with OR 19.110 (95%CI: 11.195–32.623), while the ABSI per SE with the lowest OR 1.968 (95%CI: 1.387–2.794), WC with highest AUC (0.832), WHTR and BRI with AUC (0.831), ABSI with lowest AUC (0.609). WHTR had the highest sensitivity of 0.791(0.765,0.815). Conclusion The results of this study suggest that anthropometric indices can be good predictors of MAFLD. WTHR, BRI and WC were better predictors of MAFLD in adults, correctly identifying 80% of patients with the disease.