1410-P: Natural History and Progression of Liver and Cardiac Health in Older Adults, a UK Biobank Study

Surveillance of cardiovascular and renal health is often prioritised in the care of diabetes with liver health often under recognised. We sought to determine how characteristics of the liver and heart progress over time in older adults from the general UK population, using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging. Clinical and imaging data were acquired on 2325 volunteers from the UK Biobank at two visits approximately 2.2 years apart between 2017 and 2021. Liver MRI scans were analysed using LiverMultiScan (for fat, iron content and disease activity, measured by iron-corrected T1, cT1). Paired cardiovascular magnetic resonance data for left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was available on a subset of 709 volunteers. For groupwise statistical comparisons, Wilcoxon rank sum tests were applied for continuous variables and Fishers exact tests for categorical variables. At baseline, the 2325 volunteers were characterised by the following demographics: mean age 63 (SD 7) years, 48% male, mean BMI 26 (SD 4) kg/m², 15% obese, 4.1% self-reported diabetic and 24% self-reported hypertensive. Elevated liver fat was common with a prevalence of 25%. Liver disease activity was rare in this cohort, mean liver cT1 was 694ms with only 3.4% abnormally high (≥800ms) and 2.9% with steatohepatitis. Mean liver iron levels were 1.24mg Fe/g (2% clinically high). Mean LVEF was 56% at baseline and abnormally low in 10%. At follow-up 2.2 years later, we observe no overall significant changes in prevalence of diabetes, BMI, liver fat, liver iron content or LVEF values. Overall, liver cT1 significantly increased by a mean of 5ms (SD 32) (p = <0.001). Although significant, this increase is not clinically meaningful, except in 9% with increases above and 5% decreases below the repeatability coefficient. This longitudinal dataset provides evidence for the stability of quantitative liver (cT1, fat and iron) and cardiac (LVEF) MRI metrics in a low disease population of older adults, to power future studies.