Inflammatory bowel disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease may be linked, suggests research
A steady rise in obesity in a patient population that has traditionally been underweight led Bincy Abraham, M.D., at Houston Methodist Hospital, to focus her research on two diseases seen as rising epidemics in the United States. Abraham's team published findings in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases® (IBD Journal ), showing IBD patients who were also diagnosed with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease were older and lived with IBD longer. They also found patients with the combined IBD/NAFLD diagnosis had fewer metabolic risk factors than patients with NAFLD alone. Abraham's next step is to determine if there are factors associated with IBD that lead to the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Abraham, director of the inflammatory bowel disease program at Houston Methodist Hospital, led a retrospective study of more than 400 of her patients separated into three groups -- 1) patients with both IBD and NAFLD; 2) patients with inflammatory bowel disease; and 3) patients wi...