Serum uric acid and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in non-hypertensive Chinese adults: the Cardiometabolic Risk in Chinese (CRC) study.

OBJECTIVE : The causal relation - ship between serum uric acid (SUA) level and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has not yet been clarified. The objective of the study was to determine the association between SUA and NAFLD, as well as assess the interactions between SUA and other metabolic risk factors regarding NAFLD. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study sam - ples related to a community-based health exami - nation survey conducted in Central China. Initial - ly, a total of 24,878 patients with medical exami - nation were included. After excluding the indi - viduals with confounding factors, the remaining 21,798 subjects with biomarkers available were included in the present study. RESULTS: The data show that the risk of NAFLD significantly increased with the elevated SUA levels. Further adjustment s for sex, age, and other confounding metabolic factors did not change the increasing trend of NAFLD risk. The odds ratios (ORs, 95% confidence interval (CI)) of NAFLD across the increasing quintiles of SUA were 1.00, 1,530 (1.174-1.995), 2.24 (1.714-2.886), 2.636 (2.019-3.441), and 3.714 (2.828-4.877) ( p for trend < 0.0001). Also, signif - icant interaction was found between SUA and prehypertension in relation to the NAFLD risk (p for interaction < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: SUA was significantly associ - ated with NAFLD risk, independent of other metabolic risk factors, and SUA also had signifi - cant interaction with prehypertension regarding the risk of NAFLD.