The longitudinal associations between sweet potato intake and the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: the TCLSIH cohort study

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the longitudinal association between sweet potato intake and risk of NAFLD in the general adult population. In total, the number of 15,787 participants (males, 42.4%) was included in this prospective cohort study. Sweet potato intake was assessed by using a validated food frequency questionnaire. NAFLD was diagnosed by transabdominal sonography during an annual health examination. Cox proportional hazards regression models were fitted to assess the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) across categories of energy-adjusted sweet potato intake. Compared to participants with the lowest tertile of sweet potato intake, the finally adjusted HRs (95% CIs) of incident NAFLD for those with the highest tertile were 0.87 (0.78, 0.97) in males (p for trend = 0.009); and 1.05 (0.92, 1.21) in females (p for trend = 0.52). Our study revealed that sweet potato intake was inversely associated with the risk of NAFLD in males.

Keywords:

• Sweet potato
• fatty liver
• cohort study
• NAFLD

Acknowledgment

The authors greatly acknowledge all the people that have made this study.

Author contributions

The authors’ responsibilities were as follows: H.Y. analysed the data and wrote the paper. H.Y., T.Z., S.R., A.T., W.D., G.M., Q.Z., L.L, H.W., Y.G., S.Z., X.W., H.L., J.Z., J.D., X.Z., Z.C., X.Z., X.D., S.S., X.W., M.Z., Q.J., and K.S. conducted research. K.N. designed the research and had primary responsibility for the final content. All authors had full access to all the data in the study and read and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Institution Review Board of Tianjin Medical University (Ethics Approval Number: TMUhMEC 201430), and written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Consent to participate

Written informed consent was obtained from each participant prior to enrolment.

Disclosure statement

None of the authors has any potential conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

Data of the present research is available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.