Table 3.

A summary of studies that explored the association between the rs641738 and NAFLD, liver histology, and related traits.

First author, Year, Reference	Country, Ancestry	Study design	Sample size and features	Association with NAFLD as disease trait	Effect on liver histology and liver enzymes
Studies that reported lack of association of rs641738 and NAFLD
Current study (Sookoian S, 2018	Argentina, Caucasian descent	Case-control hospital based	634 individuals (372 patients with NAFLD diagnosed by liver biopsy and 262 control subjects)	No evidence of association	No evidence of association with NASH, fibrosis, or liver enzymes
Lin YC, 201818	Taiwan, Han Chinese population	Population based; 189 (22.7%) had hepatic steatosis	831 obese children aged 7–15 years. NAFLD diagnosed by liver ultrasonographic examination	No evidence of association	No evidence of association with liver enzymes
Koo BK, 201717	Korea, Asian descent.	Case-control hospital based	525 individuals (416 patients with NAFLD diagnosed by liver biopsy and 109 healthy controls)	No evidence of association	No evidence of association with NASH, fibrosis, or liver enzymes
Dold L, 201720	Germany, Caucasian descent	Case-control hospital based	291 individuals (142 HIV-infected patients and 149 healthy blood donors). Liver stiffness assessed by Fibroscan and NAFLD by liver ultrasound.	No evidence of association	No evidence of association with liver enzymes or liver stiffness
Krawczyk M, 201714	Germany, Caucasian descent	Cases only	515 patients with NAFLD. Liver biopsy was performed in a sub-group of 320 patients.	No evidence of association	Association with liver fibrosis (P = 0.046)
Krawczyk M, 201615	Germany, Caucasian descent	Cases only	84 obese individuals scheduled for bariatric surgery	No evidence of association	No evidence of association with NASH, fibrosis, or liver enzymes
Kawaguchi T, 201816	Japan, Asian descent	Case-control hospital based	8608 individuals (936 histologically proven NAFLD patients and 7,672 general-population controls)	No evidence of association with hepatic steatosis	No evidence of association with NASH, fibrosis, or liver enzymes
Studies that reported association of rs641738 and NAFLD and NASH
Mancina R, 201612	Multi-ethnic	Two stages. First stage: population based. Second stage: cases-only, hospital based	3854 participants from the Dallas Heart Study (a multi-ethnic population-based sample of Dallas County residents; hepatic triglyceride content evaluated by liver spectroscopy n = 2736) and 1149 European individuals (NAFLD evaluated by liver biopsy).	First stage: association with NAFLD in the global analysis. Stratification by ethnic groups: association only significant in African Americans but not European)	Association with hepatic steatosis (p = 0.015), NASH (p = 0.05), and fibrosis stage F2-4 (p = 0.012).
Luukkonen P, 201613	Finland	Cases only	125 patients with NAFLD assessed by liver biopsy	Not assessed	Association with hepatic steatosis degree (p = 0.03), inflammation (p = 0.04) and fibrosis stage F2-4 (p = 0.01)
Viitasalo A, 201631	Finland	Population based	467 Caucasian children aged 6–9 years, *no assessment of NAFLD by any imaging method.	Not assessed	Association with plasma ALT levels (additional adjustment for body fat percentage show not association with liver enzymes (P = 0.063)