Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Oct 15, 2021; 12(10): 1809-1811
Published online Oct 15, 2021. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v12.i10.1809
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, diabetes medications and blood pressure
Ioannis Ilias, Costas Thomopoulos
Ioannis Ilias, Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Elena Venizelou Hospital, Athens 11521, Greece
Costas Thomopoulos, Department of Cardiology, Elena Venizelou Hospital, Athens 11521, Greece
Author contributions: Both Ilias I and Thomopoulos C conceived this work, performed the literature research, wrote this letter and revised it.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ioannis Ilias, MD, PhD, Consultant Physician-Scientist, Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Elena Venizelou Hospital, 2, El Venizelou Square, Athens 11521, Greece. iiliasmd@yahoo.com
Received: May 23, 2021
Peer-review started: May 23, 2021
First decision: June 16, 2021
Revised: June 22, 2021
Accepted: September 6, 2021
Article in press: September 6, 2021
Published online: October 15, 2021
Processing time: 142 Days and 23 Hours
Abstract

New glucose-lowering agents reduce liver enzyme levels and blood pressure (BP). Whether this finding can be extended to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients, in whom a bidirectional association of NAFLD measures and BP has been also demonstrated, remains by and large unknown.

Keywords: Antidiabetic drugs; Blood pressure reduction; Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; Sodium glucose cotransporter 2; Alanine aminotransferase; Aspartate aminotransferase

Core Tip: All new glucose-lowering agents reduce liver enzyme levels. Additionally, sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors can reduce both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) by 3.5/1 mmHg, respectively, while glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist treatment was accompanied by systolic BP reduction of 1 mmHg. Whether this previous finding can be extended to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients, in whom a bidirectional association of NAFLD measures and BP has been also demonstrated, remains by and large unknown.