Clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory analysis of patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is characterized by excessive accumulation of fat in the form of triglycerides in the liver. A subgroup of these patients presents, in addition to excess fat, cell damage and inflammation, a condition called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Objective: Evaluating the clinical and epidemiological aspects of patients with non non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, allowing a better screening of patients who will require liver biopsy. Methods: We analyzed the medical records of 73 patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, all diagnosed histopathologically after performing liver biopsy. Patients were grouped according to the degree of hepatic steatosis, being classified as mild, moderate, or severe. The normality test was performed for all cases. The mean values of the clinical epidemiological parameters were used for statistical analysis with ANOVA. The median value of the laboratory parameters was used for statistical analysis with the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: In our study on non-alcoholic steatohepatitis patients, 53.44% (39) showed mild disease, 34.24% (25) showed moderate disease and 12.32% (9) showed severe disease. Among the epidemiological, clinical and laboratory parameters evaluated, a statistically significant difference was observed among the three groups for low density lipoprotein (p = 0.02), systemic arterial hypertension (p = 0.03), metabolic syndrome (p = 0.02), and female sex (p = 0.03). Conclusions: Most patients of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis are females and present with mild hepatic steatosis, which is associated with raised low density lipoprotein values, in addition to the presence of other risk factors, such as hypertension and metabolic syndrome.