- NEW DELHI — Pregnant
women with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD)
have an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and the risk increase cannot
be explained by obesity, according to a new study on Friday.
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- It is estimated that as many as three out of ten people
globally have MASLD, previously called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Common risk factors are metabolic disorders such as Type 2 diabetes and
overweight or obesity.
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- The disease has become increasingly common, including among
women of reproductive age.
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- Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now
investigated the association between maternal MASLD and pregnancy and neonatal
birth outcomes.
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-
- Their findings, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine,
showed that women with MASLD were more than three times more likely to give
birth prematurely.
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- The risk did not increase with MASLD severity and the
increase in risk persisted even when compared to overweight or obese women
without known MASLD.
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- “This suggests that the association is not only due to a
high body mass index (BMI) and that the liver disease itself can have negative
effects,” explains lead author Carole A. Marxer, a postdoctoral researcher at
the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska
Institutet.
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- The study is based on Swedish registry data and includes a
total of 240 births among women with MASLD and 1,140 matched births of women
from the general population.
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- Women with MASLD also had a 63 per cent higher risk of
caesarean section than the control group. However, this seems to be explained
by high BMI as no increase in risk was seen compared to overweight or obese
women without fatty liver disease.
