Obesity, an independent risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in NAFLD non-cirrhotic patients

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies with increasing incidence in developed countries. Epidemiological studies show that the cause of new discovered HCC cases remains unclear in 15%-50% of cases. Obesity and the subsequent/ underlying nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) can be responsible for most of these cases. The aim of our study was to estimate the risk of HCC in obese patients diagnosed with NAFLD, without clinical or imagistic features of liver cirrhosis, in order to see if HCC can develop in fatty liver in the absence of cirrhosis. Patients with regular/daily alcohol consumption or diagnosed with liver viral infections were excluded. We studied 214 obese patients with NAFLD over a period of 5 years. We evaluated all patients using abdominal ultrasound and serum alpha-fetoprotein every 6 month, in order to detect the HCC occurrence. Kaplan-Meier analysis estimated the cumulative incidence of HCC. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to assess associations between HCC and obesity. The median follow-up was 4.3 years. During the study period, 16 from 118 cirrhotic NFLAD patients (13.5%) and 12 from 96 non-cirrhotic NAFLD patients (12.5 %) developed HCC (p = 0.07, ns). The cumulative incidence of HCC was found to be 2.9% in obese patients with NAFLD-cirrhosis, compared with 2.2% in obese patients without cirrhosis (p = 0.09, ns). Multivariate regression analysis revealed that older age (p = 0.04) was independent variable associated with development of HCC in patients with/without NAFLDcirrhosis. Obesity seems to be an independent risk factor for HCC occurrence, regardless the presence of mild or advanced liver fibrosis in NAFLD patients.