Study of Vitamin D Status and Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Obese and Normal Weight Subjects with Different Metabolic Phenotypes: A Case Control Study

Abstract Background: Obesity is a common metabolic disorder and is usually associated with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Aim of Study: This study aimed to determine vitamin D lev-el and presence of NAFLD in obese and normal weight subjects with different metabolic phenotypes. Patients and Methods: Twenty-five obese and twenty-five non obese healthy adult males were included Anthropometric measurements, serum vitamin D level, diagnosis of NAFLD by ultrasonography and fatty liver index (FLI) were performed. Metabolic health profile was determined in all subjects with classification of each group into metabolic healthy and un-healthy subgroups. ANOVA was used for comparing the four studied groups and followed by Post Hoc test (Tukey) for pair-wise comparison. And Person coefficient was used to correlate between normally distributed quantitative variables. Results: Significant lower serum vitamin D level and disturbed metabolic profile were observed in metabolically unhealthy obese (MUO) subgroup than the other studied sub-groups (p<0.001). Both metabolically unhealthy normal weight (MUNW) and MUO subgroups showed lower levels as com-pared to their corresponding healthy ones (p<0.001). 90% of metabolically healthy obese (MHO) and 933% MUO had fatty liver. While only 7.7% of metabolically healthy normal weight (MHNW) and 333% of MUNW had fatty liver. Significantly negative correlations were noticed between serum vitamin D levels and body mass index (BMI), serum triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL), homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), high sensitive C reactive protein (hs-CRP), and fatty liver index (FLI) in MHO, MUNW and MUO subgroups. Conclusion: Disturbed metabolic health could be related to low vitamin D and NAFLD in obese and normal weight subjects.