Association of high serum uric acid in chronic liver disease

Back ground: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common form of chronicliver disease, and serum uric acid is observed to be significantly elevated in NAFLD patients. Increased uric acid is associated with the metabolic syndrome, conditions linked to oxidative stress and insulin resistance. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD) is now considered a hepatic manifestation of insulin resistance. However association between uric acid and NAFLD known very little only. This study is aimed at the correlation between high serum uric acid level and chronic liver disease. Keywords: Inflammation, insulin resistance, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, uric acid.Materials and methods: This was a prospective observation study conducted in patients admitted to the General Medicine wards and medical gastroenterology ward with clinical features suggestive of chronic liver disease. All patients with evidence of chronic liver disease in clinical features and/or imaging were taken up for the study based on strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Patients’ details regarding various risk factors and clinical features were recorded on a well thought out and carefully prepared proforma. The data was analysed and the results were compared with other available similar studies. Results: The average age of patients in this study was 46.81 years. Of the 100 patients studied, 75 % were males and 25 % were females. Most of the patients were above 40 years of age. Hyperuricemia was found to be one of the most important risk factor followed by hyperlipidemia and obesity. Smoking was found have no correlation in this study. Patients with cirrhosis and fatty liver and its association with hyperuricemia analysed. These results were compared with various other studies. The results were comparable between these studies. Conclusion: Uric acid is an old molecule with many new applications and it has also been studied in various metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases and chronic kidney disease. In this study it has been found that uric acid has a significant correlation with BMI, waist circumference, hypercholesterolemia and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.