1379-P: Adding Salt to Foods and Risk of Severe Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver

Abstract

Background: High sodium intake is associated with insulin resistance, obesity, and metabolic syndrome, whereas very few studies have assessed the association of sodium intake with risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We recently found that the frequency of adding salt to foods could reflect a person’s long-term salt taste preference and sodium intake and was significantly related to life expectancy and cardiovascular disease risk. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the association between the frequency of adding salt to foods and liver proton density fat fraction (PDFF, a magnetic resonance imaging-based measure to assess liver fat content) and severe NAFLD risk. Methods: A total of 494,240 participants from UK biobank, who were free of NAFLD at baseline (2006-2010) were analyzed in this study. Of the above participants, 9816 participants have MRI-PDFF data, measured in 2014. Generalized linear models were used to evaluated association between the frequency of adding salt to foods with liver-PDFF; Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the association between the frequency of adding salt to foods and severe NAFLD risk. Results: During a median of 11 years of follow-up, 5,294 severe NAFLD cases were documented. Compared with participants who Never/Rarely added salt to foods, the adjusted Hazard Ratios (95% confidence interval) were 1.11 (1.04, 1.18), 1.27 (1.17, 1.37), and 1.45 (1.30, 1.62) across the groups of Sometimes, Usually, and Always, respectively (P-trend<0.001). The liver-PDFF values were 4.7 % (95% CI, 3.9, 5.5), 5.1% (4.3, 5.9), 5.2% (4.4, 6.0) and 5.5% (4.5-6.4) in the groups of Never/Rarely, Sometimes, Usually, and Always added salt to foods, respectively (P-trend<0.001). In sensitivity analyses, we replaced the frequency of adding salt to foods with estimated 24-hour urinary sodium extraction and found similar significant associations. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that high sodium intake is associated with higher risk of severe NAFLD. Disclosure H. Ma: None. X. Wang: None. X. Li: None. Y. Heianza: None. L. Qi: None.