Results
Patient Characteristics
Overall, 22.7% of 1532 patients in this study came from primary care clinics and 77.3% were from hospital clinics. Six patients were excluded because of anti-HCV positivity, 60 patients because of unreliable LSM results and 421 as we failed to contact for phone-interview because of various reasons (e.g. changed telephone numbers or no answer despite multiple attempts). For patients we able to contact via phone, none of them refused to give verbal consent for the phone interview. A total of 1045 chronic hepatitis B patients were thus included in this study. Majority of patients were males (652, 62.4%), of which 175 (26.8%) were overweight and 210 (32.2%) were obese. Two hundred forty seven (37.9%) male patients had elevated ALT with 71% having HBV DNA of more than 4 logs copies/ml. Four hundred and ninety-nine (47.8%) patients consumed one cup of coffee or more per day, while 231 (22.1%) patients drank alcohol. Only 26 (2.5%) patients reported no intake of both coffee and alcohol. The median (IQR) daily consumption of caffeine from food and beverages was 124 (51.6–275.6) mg/day or 1 (0.4–2.0) cup of coffee/day while alcohol consumption of >20 g/day was 1.9% (Table 2). Two hundred and sixteen (20.7%) patients had LSM suggestive of advanced fibrosis.
Caffeine Intake and Liver Fibrosis
Table 3 shows the median total caffeine consumption in mg/day and the coffee cup equivalent according to different patient characteristics where there was no significant difference in caffeine consumption among those with no fibrosis and advanced fibrosis. There was no significant difference in LSM (Table 4). In addition, caffeine intake had no significant correlation with liver stiffness (r s=0.011, P=0.722) or the Hui's index (r s=−0.002, P=0.948). Based on LSM and the Hui's index, caffeine intake by univariate and multivariate analysis was not associated with the risk of advanced liver fibrosis (Table 5).
Alcohol Intake and Liver Fibrosis
Majority of patients (77.9%) did not consume alcohol while only 11 out of 231 patients with alcohol consumption had excessive alcohol drinking. The highest alcohol consumption per day was 88 g. Advanced fibrosis was only prevalent in 26 (18.8%) of those with mild to moderate alcohol consumption compared with 190 (21.0%) of those non-alcoholic drinkers (P=0.57).
Those who drink alcohol have significantly higher caffeine consumption than those who do not drink alcohol (Table 3). Caffeine intake had positive correlation with alcohol intake (r s=0.167, P<0.001).
Liver International. 2011;31(7):1047-1053. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing
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