Even young women have an increased risk of diabetes if they have non-alcoholic fatty liver, researchers said Thursday.

A trio at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital released the result of their study, which tracked 245,504 non-diabetic adults who received medical checks at their hospital from 2011 to 2018 for the following 5.3 years based on whether they had non-alcoholic fatty liver or not.

The study was conducted by Professors Ryu Seung-ho and Chang Yu-su, and researcher Kim Ye-jin at the hospital’s Date Management Center.

They divided the subjects into three groups – 130,286 men and 109,810 pre-menopausal women, and 4,968 post-menopausal women.

The result showed that pre-menopausal women with non-alcoholic fatty liver had a 4.6 times higher risk of diabetes than those without. And the comparable gaps in post-menopausal women and men were 2.7 times and 2.3 times.

These trends were more noticeable as the severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver grew.

“The study confirmed that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is an important predictor of diabetes and also found that the relative effects of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease differed greatly depending on gender and menopause,” Professor Ryu said.

Ryu added that the study suggested that for effective diabetes prevention and management, it is necessary to consider the differential effect between genders according to the presence or absence of non-alcoholic fatty liver.

He also called for young women to pay attention to managing their lifestyle to prevent metabolic diseases, including non-alcoholic fatty liver.

Professor Chang said, “Recently, the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver among young adults has rapidly increased because of Western eating habits and decreased physical activity. Young women who were previously classified as low-risk groups cannot be free from diabetes concerns if they have non-alcoholic fatty liver.”