Seoul National University Hospital Operation Seoul National University Hospital Boramae Hospital Respiratory Internal Medicine Professor Hyunwoo Lee’s research team followed up the liver ultrasound and spirometry data of 6,149 adults who visited the Gangnam Center of Seoul National University Hospital from October 2003 to September 2015 and received health checkups at least twice for regarding 5 years. As a result of conducting a study on changes in lung function that occur according to the severity of NAFLD, 2,822 patients diagnosed with NAFLD had a higher average age and a higher proportion of obesity than the normal group without NAFLD, and The levels of major indicators related to metabolic diseases such as cholesterol and triglycerides were also relatively high, and in particular, as the severity of nonalcoholic fatty liver in the subject increased, significant changes occurred in lung function.
The results of this study were published online in the latest issue of ‘Gut and Liver’, a SCIE-level international academic journal published by the Korean Society of Gastroenterology.
The ratio of forced vital capacity (FVC), which means the amount of air that can be forcibly exhaled from the lungs within 1 year, was 46.9% in the normal group, whereas the ratio in the group with the highest severity of nonalcoholic fatty liver was 56.9%, regarding 10 % difference was found. In addition, the forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) also showed a tendency to decrease as the severity of fatty liver increased. As a result of multivariate logistic regression analysis, it was confirmed that the risk of lung function deterioration increased by up to 1.3 times when the severity of fatty liver worsened.
Professor Lee Hyun-woo said, “This study is meaningful in that it found that the deterioration of the histological severity of fatty liver, which is related to obesity, can have a significant effect on lung function. Metabolic syndrome, a systemic disease that causes It will also help to maintain it.”
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