Study of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease with Special Reference to Liver Enzyme and Radiological Finding

Abstract

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a distinct hepatic condition characterized by abnormal fat accumulation in liver cells; histologically resembling alcohol induced liver damage. The term NAFLD is used to describe a wide array of fatty liver changes from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), in the absence, of excessive alcohol intake. Methods: 312 suspected patients of NAFLD above the age group of 15 and irrespective of sex were screened during the study. Total 60 patients were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria designed for our study. Further clinical (history, BMI, BP,etc.), biochemical (blood sugar profile, lipid profile, serum transaminases, Serum uric acid etc.), histopathological (liver biopsy) and radiological profiling (USG) was done.

Result : Our 60 recruited patients had a mean age of 52.53±11.68 years with 21 (35%) male subjects and 39 (65%) female subjects. We found that fatigue, malaise and abdominal pain were the commonest whereas heart burn as the second commonest complain among the study group. Further clinical examination of 26 (43.3%) patients with RUQ abdominal pain revealed that 14 (53.8%) had abdominal tenderness, 10 (38.5%) had abdominal tenderness with hepatomegaly and 2 (7.7%) had no significant clinical findings. Our study revealed mean BMI to be 27±6.32 kg/m2 with more than half of our patients were pre-obese (33.3%) and obese (28.3%). Lipid profiling revealed 13 (21.7%) patients had hypertriglyceridemia. Serum transaminases revealed 22 (36.7%) and 39 (65%) had raised SGPT/ALT and SGOT/AST levels respectively. Ultrasonographically, 30 (50%) had grade-I, 23 (38.3%) had grade-II and 7 (11.7%) had grade-III fatty liver. Due to low patient compliance, only 3 (5%) had their liver biopsy done which revealed steatosis and dense fibrosis. Conclusion: Current absence of specific treatment further for NASH and NAFL emphasizes the need of healthy diet, yoga and daily exercise in order to control insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome.