Obesity should be actively addressed in the management of patients with chronic liver diseases as it can have a significant detrimental effect on patient outcomes, Australian researchers say.
Professor Elizabeth Powell and colleagues from the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, said that metabolic factors such as obesity and insulin resistance have a synergistic role in the natural history and clinical outcomes of a number of chronic liver diseases.
“This is best characterised in chronic hepatitis C, where steatosis and insulin resistance are caused by viral and metabolic effects,” they wrote in Digestive Diseases.
“In comparison with lean subjects, overweight or obese patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have significantly more steatosis and...
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