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Liver-function parameters are associated with incident hypertension in a large Taiwanese population follow-up study

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 37, pages 496–501 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated inconsistent results regarding the association between liver function and hypertension. In addition, large cohort follow-up studies are lacking. Therefore, this longitudinal study aimed to investigate the association between liver function and incident hypertension using data from the Taiwan Biobank (TWB). We evaluated liver biomarkers, including aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), albumin, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), total bilirubin, and gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) in this study. A total of 21,293 participants without hypertension at baseline were analyzed. During the mean 3.9-year follow-up, 3002 participants developed hypertension (defined as incident hypertension). Multivariable analysis revealed that high AST (odds ratio [OR], 1.004; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.001–1.007; p = 0.014), high ALT (OR, 1.004; 95% CI, 1.002–1.006; p < 0.001), high albumin (OR, 1.897; 95% CI, 1.573–2.286; p < 0.001), and high GGT (OR, 1.004; 95% CI, 1.003–1.005; p < 0.001) were significantly associated with incident hypertension in all study participants. In subgroup analysis of the participants with an ALT level ≤2 times the normal limit (80 u/l) (n = 20,983), multivariable analysis demonstrated that high ALT (OR, 1.009; 95% CI, 1.005–1.012; p < 0.001) and high GGT (OR, 1.005; 95% CI, 1.003–1.006; p < 0.001) were significantly associated with incident hypertension. In conclusion, we found that elevated AST, ALT, albumin, and GGT were associated with incident hypertension in a large Taiwanese cohort. A greater understanding of potential risk factors for hypertension may help to reduce the burden of hypertension in this Taiwanese population.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Taiwan Biobank, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Taiwan Biobank.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Yi-Hsueh Liu

  2. Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Municipal Siaogang Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Yi-Hsueh Liu, Szu-Chia Chen, Wen-Hsien Lee, Ying-Chih Chen, Jiun-Chi Huang, Pei-Yu Wu, Chao-Hung Kuo & Ho-Ming Su

  3. Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Yi-Hsueh Liu, Wen-Hsien Lee, Ying-Chih Chen & Ho-Ming Su

  4. Faculty of Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Szu-Chia Chen, Wen-Hsien Lee, Jiun-Chi Huang, Chih-Hsing Hung, Chao-Hung Kuo & Ho-Ming Su

  5. Research Center for Environmental Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Szu-Chia Chen & Chih-Hsing Hung

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Contributions

Y-HL reviewed the articles and wrote the paper. S-CC and W-HL analyzed and interpreted the data. Y-CC, J-CH, and P-YW provided consultation and validation. C-HH and C-HK supervised the work. H-MS revised the paper draft and the final version of the submitted paper. All authors read and approved the final paper.

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Correspondence to Ho-Ming Su.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All of the participants provided written informed consent. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital approved this study (KMUHIRB-E(I)-20210058), and ethical approval for the TWB was granted by the IRB on Biomedical Science Research, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and the Ethics and Governance Council of the TWB. In addition, the study was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Liu, YH., Chen, SC., Lee, WH. et al. Liver-function parameters are associated with incident hypertension in a large Taiwanese population follow-up study. J Hum Hypertens 37, 496–501 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-022-00694-w

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