Statins lower risk of advanced liver fibrosis in diabetes patients: Study

Written By : Medha Baranwal |Medically Reviewed By : Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli Published On 2021-03-20T08:20:57+05:30 | Updated On 20 March 2021 1:06 PM IST

Italy: Statin use lowers the risk of cirrhosis and advanced liver fibrosis in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients, finds a recent study in the journal Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental. The lower risk was specifically seen in younger patients and women.

Type 2 diabetes patients are at increased risk of both advanced liver fibrosis related to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Statin use is known to reduce the CVD incidence while evidence on its effect on NAFLD severity is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, Stefano Ciardullo and Gianluca Perseghin from Italy, performed a cross-sectional study performed using data from the 2017–2018 cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

It included adult patients with T2D and reliable vibration-controlled transient elastography (VCTE) results. Presence of liver fibrosis and steatosis were assessed by the median values of controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) and liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and, respectively. Patients with evidence of viral hepatitis and significant alcohol consumption were excluded.

The association between statin treatment and both steatosis and advanced (≥F3) liver fibrosis was evaluated using Logistic regression analysis after adjustment for potential confounders.

The study population consisted of 744 patients.

Key findings of the study include:

NAFLD (CAP≥274 dB/m) was present in 74.9% of patients and 14.5% had advanced fibrosis (LSM ≥ 9.6 KPa).
After adjustment for age, sex, race-ethnicity, BMI, albumin, total cholesterol, HbA1c, triglycerides and liver enzymes, statin use was associated with lower odds of advanced fibrosis (OR 0.35).
No significant interaction was found between statin use and steatosis.

"Given the absence of approved therapies for NAFLD-fibrosis, it would be reasonable to initiate specific randomized controlled trials with statins," wrote the authors.

The study titled, "Statin use is associated with lower prevalence of advanced liver fibrosis in patients with type 2 diabetes," is published in the journal Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental.

DOI: https://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(21)00052-4/fulltext

Metabolism: Clinical and Experimentalstatintype 2 diabetesliver fibrosiscirrhosis

Source : Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental

Medha Baranwal

MSc. Biotechnology

Medha Baranwal joined Medical Dialogues as an Editor in 2018 for Speciality Medical Dialogues. She covers several medical specialties including Cardiac Sciences, Dentistry, Diabetes and Endo, Diagnostics, ENT, Gastroenterology, Neurosciences, and Radiology. She has completed her Bachelors in Biomedical Sciences from DU and then pursued Masters in Biotechnology from Amity University. She has a working experience of 5 years in the field of medical research writing, scientific writing, content writing, and content management. She can be contacted at editorial@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751

Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli

Dr Kamal Kant Kohli-MBBS, DTCD- a chest specialist with more than 30 years of practice and a flair for writing clinical articles, Dr Kamal Kant Kohli joined Medical Dialogues as a Chief Editor of Medical News. Besides writing articles, as an editor, he proofreads and verifies all the medical content published on Medical Dialogues including those coming from journals, studies,medical conferences,guidelines etc. Email: drkohli@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751