Incident heart failure is common and underrecognized in patients with biopsy-proven metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease

Aims: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is associated with heart failure (HF), independent of shared risk factors. Our aim was to describe the incidence of HF in patients with biopsy-proven MASLD. Methods and results: We followed patients with biopsy-proven MASLD from the prospective Duke NAFLD Biorepository and Clinical Database from liver biopsy (2007–2013) until death or 5 January 2023. Clinical and echocardiographic data were abstracted via manual chart review. Incident HF was defined as one of the following: (1) hospitalization for HF, (2) medical record diagnosis of HF, (3) ≥1 sign/symptom of HF and elevated natriuretic peptide, or (4) diastolic dysfunction on transthoracic echocardiography with ≥1 sign/symptom of HF. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were evaluated. Overall, 570 patients with biopsy-proven MASLD were included. The mean age was 49.5 years, 42.5% were male and 87.0% were non-Hispanic White. Ten patients (1.8%) had baseline HF, leaving 560 patients to assess for incident HF. Over a median follow up of 4009 days (11.0 years) (interquartile range 2270–4672 days), 100 (17.9%) patients developed incident HF while 268 (47.9%) met criteria for HF suspicion. In a multivariable model, increasing age (odds ratio [OR] 1.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02–1.08, p < 0.001) and female sex (OR 1.85, 95% CI 1.12–3.04, p = 0.02) were associated with incident HF. Conclusions: We found a high incidence of HF in patients with biopsy-proven MASLD. Despite nearly half of patients having suspected HF, very few carried a chart diagnosis. Screening for HF in high-risk patients and establishment of formal care pathways to address early HF may reduce morbidity and mortality.