Opioid Use is More Common in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Patients with Cirrhosis, Higher Body Mass Index and Psychiatric Disease.

Challenge

Opioid use in NAFLD patients poses significant hepatic and systemic safety risks, yet the prevalence of opioid prescribing across the NAFLD disease spectrum and its relationship to disease severity, comorbidities, and psychiatric disease had not been characterized in a real-world population.

Solution

The TARGET-NASH cohort was used to quantify opioid use prevalence across NAFL, NASH, and cirrhosis patient subgroups and identify independent predictors of opioid use through multivariable regression, providing the first large-scale real-world characterization of this safety-relevant prescribing pattern.

Impact

Establishing that opioid use is disproportionately common in NAFLD patients with cirrhosis, obesity, and psychiatric disease creates a directly actionable safety surveillance signal for drug developers designing concomitant medication policies in NAFLD trials.