Screening for Pancreatic Exocrine Insufficieny in Metabolic Associated Fatty Liver Disease Patients

Pancreatic Exocrine Insufficiency

MAFLD

to investigate the frequency of PEI in MAFLD

The growing epidemic of obesity is observed worldwide as lifestyles change to include higher caloric diets and decreasing physical activity. With obesity; ectopic fat deposition in certain organs is accompanied by insulin resistance, hypertension and dyslipidemia; which in turn leads to metabolic syndrome As such, metabolic associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome, has already become the most common cause of liver disease worldwide with a prevalence 25% Another important organ where ectopic fat deposition takes place is pancreas. Although hepatic fat is mainly intracellular and fatty pancreas is a consequence of adipocyte infiltration, evidence exists that fatty pancreas could be used as the initial indicator of ectopic fat deposition Recently, an advanced MRI technique - MRI-estimated proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF) - was shown to give reliable quantitative information of hepatic fat that is well correlated with liver biopsy The pancreas is composed of two glands - endocrine pancreas and exocrine pancreas- that are intimately mixed together into one organ Although exocrine pancreas comprise more than 95% of the pancreatic mass, to date there is no study conducted about the exocrine pancreas function and pancreatic fat in MAFLD patients The fecal pancreatic elastase (PE) test is a valuable indirect assay used in the evaluation of pancreatic exocrine function PE testing has become a standard diagnostic tool exhibiting good correlation with the results of direct functional tests as well as morphological changes in the pancreas discovered via imaging techniques In the last decade, significant number of studies were conducted on pancreatic exocrine insufficiency (PEI)

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