Aim: To assess the prevalence of elevated liver enzymes and associated diabetes-related comorbidities in type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Subjects and methods: Between 2010 and 2019, 281 245 patients with T2D (aged 18-75 years) from 501 Diabetes Prospective Follow-up (DPV) centres were evaluated, resulting in analysis of 51 645 patients with complete data on demographics and liver enzymes.
Results: Elevated liver enzymes were found in 40.2% of all patients. However, only 8.6% of these patients had International Classification of Diseases-10 codes for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and/or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Adjusted for age, sex, diabetes duration, body mass index and glycated haemoglobin, a higher prevalence of arterial hypertension (P < 0.0001), dyslipidaemia (P < 0.0001), peripheral artery disease (P = 0.0029), myocardial infarction (P = 0.0003), coronary artery disease (P = 0.0001), microalbuminuria (P < 0.0001) and chronic kidney disease (P < 0.0001) was seen in patients with elevated versus normal liver enzymes. The prevalence of elevated liver enzymes was lowest in patients receiving sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors or a combination of SGLT2 inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists.
Conclusion: Elevated liver enzymes are common in patients with T2D and clearly correlate with a higher prevalence of clinically relevant comorbidities. Assessing liver enzymes should be standard clinical routine in T2D due to a possible predictive role for comorbidities and complications.
Keywords: GLP-1 receptor agonists; NAFLD; SGLT2 inhibitors; liver enzymes; metabolic syndrome; type 2 diabetes.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.