Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0301774

Publication Title

PLOS One

Volume

19

Issue

5

Pages

e0301774 (1-15)

Abstract

Background and aims

The cornerstone of clinical management of patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are lifestyle changes such as increasing physical activity (PA) aimed at improving cardiometabolic risk. To inform NAFLD prevention and treatment guidelines we aimed to: (i) quantify the role of PA on lowering the risk for NAFLD and fibrosis; (ii) characterize NAFLD and fibrosis association with PA in the context of socioeconomic environment.

Methods

A sample of 2648 participants from the NHANES 2003–2006 was selected to develop survey weighted multivariable logistic regression models for predicting NAFLD and significant fibrosis, diagnosed non-invasively via fatty liver index (FLI) and fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) index. The PA measures were obtained from a hip-worn accelerometer.

Results

The predictive model for NAFLD showed AUC of 0.687 and a decrease of 43% in NAFLD risk with moderate vigorous PA (MVPA) (OR = 0.569, p < 0.001). The predictive model for fibrosis had AUC of 0.755 and there was a 48% and a 70% decrease in significant fibrosis risk with MVPA (OR = 0.518, p = 0.022) and total log activity count (TLAC) (OR = 0.296, p = 0.017), respectively. Participants with NAFLD and NAFLD with fibrosis engage in declining PA. Despite having jobs with higher level of PA and participating in more moderate-to-vigorous PA, a larger proportion of Hispanics participants had NAFLD and significant fibrosis.

Conclusions

These findings demonstrate the role of PA as a protective factor against the presence of NAFLD and significant fibrosis. Protective levels of PA in NAFLD differ by races.

Rights

© 2024 Tabacu et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data can be downloaded from CDC website https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/index.htm."

Original Publication Citation

Tabacu, L., Swami, S., Ledbetter, M., Siddiqui, M. S., & Smirnova, E. (2024). Socioeconomic status and health disparities drive differences in accelerometer-derived physical activity in fatty liver disease and significant fibrosis. PLOS One, 19(5), 1-15, Article e0301774. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301774

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