2212-PUB: The Prevalence of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Is Increased in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes but Not in Those with Peripheral Artery Disease

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a feature of the metabolic syndrome and is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Whether the prevalence of NAFLD is increased independently from the presence of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) is unknown and is addressed in the present study. We assessed the prevalence of NAFLD as estimated by the validated fatty liver index in four groups of patients, including 216 who neither had PAD nor T2DM, 56 without PAD but with T2DM, 157 with PAD but without T2DM and 119 with the combination of T2DM and PAD. Both, among patients without PAD and among those with PAD, T2DM was associated with an increased prevalence of NAFLD (71.4 vs. 39.4%; p<0.001 and 70.6 vs. 40.8%; p<0.001, respectively). However, the prevalence of NAFLD neither among those with nor among those without T2DM was significantly associated with the presence of PAD (p=0.783 and p=0.909, respectively). The prevalence of NAFLD was significantly higher in patients with T2DM but without PAD than in PAD patients who did not have diabetes (p<0.001). T2DM after multivariate adjustment remained significantly associated with NAFLD (OR 3.23 [1.77-5.90]; p<0.001). We conclude that the prevalence of NAFLD disease is increased in patients with T2DM but not in those with PAD.