Liver diseases, even in early stages, can impact your heart health, found a new study.
(Photo: Garima Sadhwani/FIT)
Liver diseases, even in early stages, can impact your heart health, found a new study published in the Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine journal by researchers at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
What should you know? FIT tells you.
The big reveal: The researchers found that increased FIB-4 scores in a person, which indicate liver fibrosis or severe liver disease, are also associated with heart abnormalities.
What are experts saying: Alan Kwan, the lead author of the study, said that while it was already known that nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases were linked to cardiovascular deaths, not much was known to understand the relation between them apart from common risk factors.
The American Heart Association had also previously stated that people diagnosed with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease often die due to heart issues.
Kwan said,
The methodology used: Electronic medical records of 1,668 patients for the past 11 years were reviewed by the researchers. These were patients with low, moderate, or high FIB-4 scores within the time frame of a year after having a cardiac MRI. The study found that at least one heart abnormality was observed in 86 percent patients.
More importantly:
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