Independent Association between Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Table 1

Characteristics of studies include in meta-analysis.

First author; (year)	Country	Participants		Study design	Followup (person-year)	NOS score	Outcome measures
		No. in analysis	Characteristics
Assy (2010)	Israel	800	Individuals with law to intermediate risk for CAD and presence of fatty liver	Cross-sectional	NA	7	Coronary heart; disease coronary atherosclerosis coronary; plague (%)
Choi (2008)	Korea	659	Healthy people	Cross-sectional	NA	7	Carotid; atherosclerosis
Targher (2007)	Italy	2392	Diabetic patients	Cross-sectional	NA	7	Coronary heart; disease; cerebrovascular disease; peripheral vascular; disease
Hamaguchi (2012)	Japan	1647	Healthy people	Cohort	7115	8	Coronary heart; disease; ischemic stroke; cerebral; hemorrhage
Targher (2006)	Italy	800	Diabetic patients	Cross-sectional	NA	7	Coronary disease; peripheral disease; cerebral disease
Targher (2005)	Italy	744	Diabetic patients	Cohort	3720	7	Myocardial; infarction; coronary artery; bypass grafting; ischemic stroke; cardiovascular; events death

NOS score = Newcastle-Ottawa scale: used for quality assessment. We assigned NOS scores of 1–3, 4–6, and 7–9 for low, intermediate, and high-quality studies, respectively. These six studies are all adjusted for confounders, such as age, sex, diabetes duration, HbA1c, smoking history, LDL cholesterol, GGT levels and use of medications (i.e., hypoglycemic, antihypertensive, lipid-lowering, or anti-platelet drugs), and NCEP ATP III-defined MS.