• Yu-Chen Guo, Yong Zhou, Xing Gao, Yan Yao, Bin Geng, Qing-Hua Cui, Ji-Chun Yang, and Hong-Pu Hu.
• Department of Health Information Management, Institute of Medical Information, Peking Union Medical College & Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100020, China.
• Chin. Med. J. 2018 Oct 5; 131 (19): 2269-2276.

BackgroundNonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common chronic liver diseases with a high prevalence in the general population. The association between NAFLD and cardiovascular disease has been well addressed in previous studies. However, whether NAFLD is associated with carotid artery disease in a community-based Chinese population remained unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between NAFLD and carotid artery disease.MethodsA total of 2612 participants (1091 men and 1521 women) aged 40 years and older from Jidong of Tangshan city (China) were selected for this study. NAFLD was diagnosed by abdominal ultrasonography. The presence of carotid stenosis or plaque was evaluated by carotid artery ultrasonography. Logistic regression was used to analyze the association between NAFLD and carotid artery disease.ResultsParticipants with NAFLD have a higher prevalence of carotid stenosis (12.9% vs. 4.6%) and carotid plaque (21.9% vs. 15.0%) than those without NAFLD. After adjusting for age, gender, smoking status, income, physical activity, diabetes, hypertension, triglyceride, waist-hip ratio, and high-density lipoprotein, NAFLD is significantly associated with carotid stenosis (odds ratio [OR]: 2.06, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.45-2.91), but the association between NAFLD and carotid plaque is not statistically significant (OR: 1.10, 95% CI: 0.8-1.40).ConclusionA significant association between NAFLD and carotid stenosis is found in a Chinese population.

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