FIGURE 3.

The rates of metabolic disorders among the HBeAg-negative patients. Since 2 metabolic variables (serum ferritin and IRI) are suggested to predict the presence of progressive disease in Japanese NAFLD patients,¹² we focused on the levels of these variables. Gray boxes indicate the patients who had an abnormal level of at least one of the 2 metabolic variables (according to the criteria shown in the “Patients and Methods” section). The rate of metabolic disorders was significantly higher among patients with an elevated ALT level and a low HBV-DNA level than it was among the patients of the remaining three groups.