986 The Risk of Depression in Patients With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease in the United States. The association of depression with chronic liver disease is reported in the literature, but the previous studies that established this association were limited in size. Therefore, we aimed in this study is to evaluate the association between NAFLD and depression using very large database. METHODS: Using data from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database between 2002 and 2014, we identified all patients who were diagnosed with NAFLD using appropriate ICD 9 coding. The control group was the patients who did not have a diagnosis of NAFLD. We then performed multivariate logistic regression analysis for the association between NAFLD and depression. RESULTS: The total population was comprised of 101,231,036 patients, of which 365,701 (0.36%) were diagnosed with NAFLD. Patients in the NAFLD group were older (53 vs 48), less likely to be females (57.7% vs 58.4%) and African American (9.3% vs 14.3%) (P < 0.001 for all). In addition, NAFLD patients had more obesity (26.2% vs 6.9%), smoking (13.9% vs 9.5%), hypothyroidism (12.2% vs 7.8%) and diabetes mellitus (DM) with or without complications (5.6% vs 3.2%) and (30.7% vs 14.1%) respectively, (P < 0.001 for all). Using Multivariate logistic regression, and after adjusting for potential cofounding factors including: (age, gender, race, obesity, smoking, DM and hypothyroidism), NAFLD group had a statistically significant higher rate of depression (Odds Ratio [OR] 1.75, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.73–1.77, P < 0.0001) compared with the non-NAFLD group. CONCLUSION: Our analysis of very large nationwide database showed that patients with NAFLD were more likely to have depression compared to patients without NAFLD. This finding highlights the importance of depression screening in patients with NAFLD which can help improve their quality of life.