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Dairy products intake and prevalence, incidence, and recovery of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in Chinese population

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Abstract

Background

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a growing public health concern. Modifiable factors such as diet and lifestyle are of research interest in preventing or reversing the disease. The relationship between dairy products and NAFLD remains unclear.

Methods

In this cohort study, 36,122 participants aged 20–74 were enrolled by multi-stage, stratified, randomized cluster sampling from 2016 to 2017. A total of 25,085 participants finished at least one follow-up visit from 2019 to 2023. Dairy intake was collected by food frequency questionnaire at baseline. NAFLD was defined as fatty liver diagnosed by ultrasonography with excessive alcohol drink excluded. Logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyze the association between dairy intake and NAFLD.

Results

A total of 34,040 participants were included in the baseline analysis. The prevalence of NAFLD was inversely associated with dairy intake (OR>7vs 0 servings/week = 0.91, 95% CI 0.84–0.98; ORper serving/day increase = 0.95, 95% CI 0.92–0.99). 20,460 participants entered the follow-up analysis. Among 12,204 without NAFLD at baseline, 4,470 developed NAFLD after a median time of 4.3 years. The incidence of NAFLD was inversely associated with dairy intake (HR>7 vs 0 servings/week = 0.89, 95% CI 0.81–0.98; HRper serving/day increase = 0.94, 95% CI 0.89–0.99). Among 8256 with NAFLD at baseline, 3,885 recovered after 4.2-year follow-up. Total dairy intake did not show significant associations with recovery of NAFLD, and the HRs (95% CI) were 0.96 (0.87–1.06) for > 7 servings/week and 0.98 (0.93–1.03) for per serving/day increase.

Conclusion

Dairy product intake of more than one serving per day was associated with a lower prevalence and incidence of NAFLD in Chinese population. However, total dairy intake did not show significant association in NAFLD reversal.

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Data availability

Data available on request from the authors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the School of Public Health, Fudan University and Songjiang District Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shanghai. The authors thank all the participants in the study and the members of the survey teams.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0907000, 2017YFC0908001), and the High Local Level Discipline Construction Project of Shanghai, the Shanghai New Three-Year Action Plan for Public Health (GWV-10.1-XK16, GWVI-11.1-23).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety of Ministry of Education, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Yurou Xu, Youyi Wang, Qi Zhao, Bo Chen, Na Wang, Tiejun Zhang, Na He, Genming Zhao & Xing Liu

  2. Songjiang District Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shanghai, 201600, China

    Yonggen Jiang & Yiling Wu

Authors
  1. Yurou Xu
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  2. Youyi Wang
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Contributions

Study design, data cleaning, analysis, and interpretation were performed by YX, YW, and XL. QZ, BC, NW, TZ, and YW contributed to the data collection and management of study sites. YJ, NH, and GZ contributed to funding acquisition and establishment of the cohort. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YX, and XL supervised the study and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xing Liu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors (Yurou Xu, Youyi Wang, Qi Zhao, Bo Chen, Na Wang, Tiejun Zhang, Yonggen Jiang, Yilin Wu, Na He, Genming Zhao and Xing Liu) declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of School of Public Health, Fudan University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

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Xu, Y., Wang, Y., Zhao, Q. et al. Dairy products intake and prevalence, incidence, and recovery of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in Chinese population. Hepatol Int 18, 529–539 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12072-024-10638-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12072-024-10638-w

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