Risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in patients with chronic liver disease
- 1Section of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
- 2Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
- Correspondence to Dr Giovanni Targher, Section of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Ospedale Civile Maggiore, Piazzale Stefani 1, 37126 Verona, Italy; giovanni.targher{at}univr.it
We read with interest the article by Stepanova et al in a recent issue of Gut. These authors used death certificate data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination survey (NHANES-III 1988–1994) in order to assess the impact of metabolic syndrome components on all-cause and cause-specific mortality in patients with chronic liver disease (CLD).1 They concluded that components of the metabolic syndrome are independently associated with overall and liver-related mortality in patients with CLD (principally among those with viral hepatitis C, alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)).1
Overall, the article is well written and the authors have discussed their results cautiously and in a balanced way, given the well-recognised limitations of using the NHANES-III dataset …
