We performed a cross‐sectional study on 215 Japanese employees aged 20–68 years to investigate the association between NAFLD and serum phospholipid fatty acid composition. NAFLD was diagnosed by ultrasonography. The fatty acid composition between the control and NAFLD groups was compared, and the inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was performed to eliminate each confounding effect of sex, smoking status, BMI, insulin resistance, dietary cholesterol, and salt intake. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to evaluate the NAFLD prediction accuracy of fatty acids. Seventy‐one subjects were diagnosed with NAFLD. Their serum phospholipid dihomo‐γ‐linolenic acid (DGLA) level was significantly higher after adjusting for each variable using IPTW. In the ROC analysis, the ratio of ARA to DGLA had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.763. By combining the ratio of ARA to DGLA with the ratio of AST to ALT, AUC increased to 0.871. In conclusion, NAFLD subjects in a Japanese working population have higher serum phospholipid DGLA. Results of the IPTW and ROC analysis indicated that serum PL DGLA and the ratio of ARA to DGLA provide diagnosis information on the fatty liver that is different to AST and ALT and improve the accuracy of fatty liver prediction, owning potential value as serum biomarkers.

中文翻译：

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日本人群非酒精性脂肪性肝病中血清磷脂 n-6 多不饱和脂肪酸组成的变化：一项横断面研究。

我们对 215 名 20-68 岁的日本员工进行了横断面研究，以调查 NAFLD 与血清磷脂脂肪酸组成之间的关联。NAFLD 通过超声检查确诊。比较对照组和 NAFLD 组之间的脂肪酸组成，并进行治疗加权逆概率 (IPTW)，以消除性别、吸烟状况、BMI、胰岛素抵抗、膳食胆固醇和盐摄入量的各种混杂影响。进行受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线分析以评估脂肪酸的 NAFLD 预测准确性。71 名受试者被诊断为 NAFLD。在使用 IPTW 调整每个变量后，他们的血清磷脂二高-γ-亚麻酸 (DGLA) 水平显着更高。在 ROC 分析中，ARA 与 DGLA 之比的曲线下面积 (AUC) 为 0.763。通过将 ARA 与 DGLA 的比率与 AST 与 ALT 的比率相结合，AUC 增加到 0.871。总之，日本工作人群中的 NAFLD 受试者具有更高的血清磷脂 DGLA。IPTW和ROC分析结果表明，血清PL DGLA和ARA与DGLA的比值提供了不同于AST和ALT的脂肪肝诊断信息，提高了脂肪肝预测的准确性，具有作为血清生物标志物的潜在价值。