Is MAFLD better than NAFLD in predicting the risk of major cardiovascular diseases? Evidence from a 7-year prospective cohort study.

Background and aims: Whether the new standard of metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) has more pronounced clinical and population screening diagnostic value than nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is unclear. This study evaluated the utility of MAFLD and NAFLD for predicting major cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

Methods and results: A prospective cohort study approach was utilized to collect 19,399 study participants without CVD at baseline who completed follow-up from the Jinchang cohort platform during 2011-2017. According to clinical ultrasonic diagnosis results and disease diagnosis criteria, the baseline population was divided into MAFLD, NAFLD, Both-FLD and No-FLD groups. Based on the multifactorial Cox proportional risk model to analyze the relationship between three kinds of patients and CVD, the score prediction model of CVD was constructed with reference to the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) and the model was evaluated. Compared with No-FLD, the HRs and 95 % CIs for the risk of CVD development in patients with NAFLD, MAFLD, and Both-FLD were 1.54 (1.34-1.76), 1.57 (1.37-1.79), and 1.62 (1.41-1.87), in that order. The scoring model showed a range of 5.90%-84.59 % risk of CVD in the three groups. As the risk score increased, the risk of developing CVD gradually increased. Evaluation metrics of all three models in the training set and validation set showed that the models have good prediction efficacy.

Conclusion: In terms of CVD risk and prognosis, MAFLD had no advantage over NAFLD. However, Both-FLD was found to predict a higher risk of CVD and to have superior predictive efficacy.