PhD Scientific Days 2025

Conservative Medicine II.

The Role of the „Fatty Pancreas” in Type 2 Diabetes Development

Name of the presenter

Nádasdi Ákos

Institute/workplace of the presenter

Institute of Translational Medicine, Semmelweis University

Authors

Ákos Nádasdi Dr.¹, Botond A. Nemes¹, Anikó Somogyi Prof. Dr.², Zoltán Benyó Prof. Dr.¹, Gábor Firneisz Dr.¹

1: Institute of Translational Medicine, Semmelweis University
2: Department of Internal Medicine and Haematology, Semmelweis University

Text of the abstract

Introduction: In our preceding study we assessed associations between intrapancreatic, intrahepatic fat deposition and metabolic factors including prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2DM). In contrast to the internationally accepted cut-off value for the liver fat content for „steatotic liver” in metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) no such cut-off value of the pancreatic fat content (PTGC) is available for the diagnosis of „fatty pancreas”.
Aims: We aimed to further analyze the relationship between PTGC and T2DM and to estabilish a lipid cut-off value associated with T2DM development based on our and published data.
Methods: We used data of 39 participants from our prior study and data of publications available in the literature were included using the following criteria:
• MR based methods used for pancreatic lipid value quantification
• Only adult participants were studied
• Lipid values in prediabetes / T2DM / normal glucose tolerant (NGT) groups were available.
We used meta-analysis to assess the mean difference of lipid values between groups with different glycemic states (NGT-prediabetes-T2DM). After pooling the lipid values of each groups best cut-off point was estabilished using ROC analysis and Youden index. Analyses were performed in R (meta, metafor and ggplot2 packages).
Results: We found 42 further publications according to the inclusion criteria, however n=22 were excluded from the final analysis. During meta-analysis we found significant differences in PTGC values between the glycemic groups (mean difference NGT vs T2DM: 4.11%, p<0.0001; NGT vs prediabetes: 4.02%, p=0.002; prediabetes vs T2DM: 2.51%, p=0.048). We found the best cut-off value of PTGC for NGT vs T2DM: 7.72% (sensitivity=0.94, specificity=0.97).
Conclusion: We found a step-wise increase in PTGC values in the following sequence: NGT – prediabetes – T2DM. We estabilished a PTGC cut-off value of 7.7% with good discrimination capability for NGT and T2DM populations. Further studies are needed to assess the clinical consequences of this metabolic endpoint associated cut-off value for „fatty pancreas”.
Funding: EKÖP24