Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease

Abstract Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is the most common liver disease. Accumulating evidence suggests a relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and MASLD development; however, this relationship has not been investigated. We aimed to determine whether SSB consumption was associated with an increased risk of MASLD in Korean adults. This study used data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2012–2016 (n = 8,310, age 40–64 years). In the present study, soft drink consumption (> 200 mL/week) was associated with increased odds of MASLD (OR 1.40, 95%CI 1.08–1.81, P-trend = 0.01), and Korean traditional drink consumption (> 200 mL/week) was associated with decreased odds of MASLD (OR 0.65, 95%CI 0.47–0.90, P-trend = 0.01). When stratified by sex, a positive association between soft drinks and MASLD was observed in females (OR 1.60, 95%CI 1.13–2.26, P-trend = 0.001) but not in males; a suggestive inverse association between Korean traditional drinks and MASLD was observed in males (OR 0.74, 95%CI 0.51–1.08, P-trend = 0.13) but not in females. In conclusion, soft drink consumption of at least one serving (200 mL) per week was positively associated with MASLD, whereas consumption of the same amount of Korean traditional drinks was inversely associated with MASLD.