Impacts of cardiometabolic risk factors and alcohol consumption on all-cause mortality among MASLD and its subgroups

Recently, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) has been defined but research on this new nomenclature and its characterisation remains limited. A study assessed the impact of cardiometabolic risk factors and alcohol consumption on all-cause mortality in MASLD and its subgroups.
2,408 participants with MASLD from NHANES III were included in the study. MASLD patients were divided into two groups based on alcohol consumption: Pure MASLD and MetALD. The study assessed the association between factors and all-cause mortality. During the median 26.0-year follow-up, there were 1,040 deaths. A significant increase of over two-fold in the all-cause mortality rate was found among patients with four or more cardiometabolic risk factors compared to those with only one. When focusing on each component of cardiometabolic risk factors individually, only diabetes and hypertension were significantly associated with all-cause mortality. In a subgroup analysis, each additional cardiometabolic factor was linked to an increase in all-cause mortality in both pure MASLD (hazard ratio 1.16; 95% CI 1.06-1.28) and MetALD (HR 1.77; 95% CI 1.26-2.49). Notably, an elevation in alcohol consumption was significantly associated with an increase in all-cause mortality rate only in the MetALD.
The study found that the presence of diabetes or hypertension was significantly associated with all-cause mortality.
Source: Li M, Chen W, Deng Y, Xie W. Impacts of cardiometabolic risk factors and alcohol consumption on all-cause mortality among MASLD and its subgroups. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2024 Sep;34(9):2085-2094.