Association of Comorbidity Duration with the Occurrence and Prognosis of Steatotic Liver Disease

Steatotic liver disease (SLD) interacts with various comorbidities, impacting outcomes, yet little is known about the duration of comorbidities in SLD occurrence and mortality. We investigated this relationship, focusing on disease predictors and mortality rates.

Analyzing 2010 and 2015 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data for patients aged ≥ 20, we categorized ten comorbidities (hypertension [HTN], diabetes mellitus [DM], dyslipidemia, stroke, myocardial infarction [MI], angina pectoris, asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease [COPD], chronic kidney disease [CKD], and depression) by duration. Association rule mining and logistic regression analyzed the association between SLD occurrence and comorbidity duration, while Cox regression assessed survival.

The analysis included 2,757 SLD and 9,505 non-SLD cases. Association rule mining showed that the shorter duration of DM and dyslipidemia and the longer duration of HTN comprised the top-ranked component for presence of SLD. DM with a duration ≤ 1 year showed higher risk of SLD than longer periods (odds ratio, 11.53), while the duration of cardiovascular disease, lung disease, or CKD was not significantly associated with the presence of SLD. In terms of prognosis, multivariate Cox regression showed that longer HTN and DM durations were significantly associated with increased hazard ratio (HR) beyond 10 years (HR, 2.22 and 2.11, respectively). Cardiovascular disease duration ≤ 5 years and lung disease duration > 5 years showed statistical significance (HR 2.49and 2.38, respectively).

Duration of comorbidities should be considered for comprehensive SLD risk stratification, for both the identification of SLD and the assessment of their prognosis after detection.