Association of sex-specific body mass index and waist circumference trajectories with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease incidence based on growth mixture modeling.

Background And Aims: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common chronic liver disease. The relationship between the trajectories of obesity indicators and incident NAFLD is unknown. Therefore, this study aims to explore the sex-specific association between the trajectories of obesity indicators and the incidence of NAFLD.

Methods And Results: In total, 9067 participants were recruited for this longitudinal study. Obesity indicators use body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). The trajectory of obesity indicators was analyzed using the growth mixture modeling. The multivariate logistic regression model was used to analyze the association between obesity indicators' trajectories and incident NAFLD. Over a median follow-up of 1.82 years, 1013 (11.74%) participants developed NAFLD. We identified BMI and WC change trajectories as the stable group, increasing group, and decreasing group. After adjusting for baseline level and other confounders, multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that compared with stable group of BMI, the increasing group, and decreasing group odds ratio and 95% confidence interval of NAFLD were 2.10 (1.06-4.15), and 0.25 (0.09-0.67) in men, and 1.82 (1.08-3.04) and 0.32 (0.16-0.64) in women. Compared with stable group of WC, the increasing group was 2.57 (1.39-4.74) in men, the increasing group, and decreasing group were 2.29 (1.70-3.10) and 0.28 (0.12-0.64) in women. Sensitivity analysis showed that the results were stable.

Conclusion: The BMI and WC changing trajectories are significantly associated with the incidence of NAFLD in men and women. Populations of real-world health examinations can be categorized based on obesity indicator changes to prevent NAFLD.