Copyright
©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Predictors for advanced fibrosis in morbidly obese non-alcoholic fatty liver patients
Shira Zelber-Sagi, Dafna Shoham, School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel
Shira Zelber-Sagi, Isabel Zvibel, Oren Shibolet, Sigal Fishman, Department of Gastroenterology, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv 6423906, Israel
Isabel Zvibel, Sigal Fishman, Obesity Service, Department of Gastroenterology, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv 6423906, Israel
Isabel Zvibel, Oren Shibolet, Sigal Fishman, the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 6423906, Israel
Subhi Abu-Abeid, Bariatric Unit, Department of Surgery, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv 6423906, Israel
Author contributions: All authors critically reviewed the manuscript and approved it.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the institutional review board of Tel Aviv medical center.
Informed consent statement: All participants signed an informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at zelbersagi@bezeqint.net.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Shira Zelber-Sagi, PhD, School of Public Health, University of Haifa, 6 Weizmann St., Haifa 3498838, Israel. zelbersagi@bezeqint.net
Telephone: +972-3-6973984 Fax: +972-3-6966286
Received: August 10, 2016
Peer-review started: August 10, 2016
First decision: September 12, 2016
Revised: September 30, 2016
Accepted: November 16, 2016
Article in press: November 17, 2016
Published online: January 18, 2017
Peer-review started: August 10, 2016
First decision: September 12, 2016
Revised: September 30, 2016
Accepted: November 16, 2016
Article in press: November 17, 2016
Published online: January 18, 2017
Core Tip
Core tip: The presented results indicate that male gender and a higher body mass index (BMI) are risk factors for advanced fibrosis in morbidly obese patients. There is also a positive correlation between cigarette smoking and liver stiffness in men. Our study highlights the fact that even in the upper BMI ranges, higher BMI bears greater risk for advanced disease. Therefore, in the morbidly obese population it may seem useful to emphasize the importance of weight reduction, even within the range of obesity.