Prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A meta-analysis

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is emerging as a public health issue worldwide and is highly prevalent in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, there was a great disparity across studies in the estimated prevalence of NAFLD in T2DM patients. This meta-analysis, therefore, aimed to estimate the pooled prevalence of NAFLD in T2DM patients. Electronic databases of PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang were searched using MeSH terms to identify relevant studies. Eligibility assessment and data extraction were conducted independently by 2 investigators and a meta-analysis was performed to synthesize the data. Heterogeneity was evaluated using the Cochran Q test and quantified using the I statistic. Publication bias was assessed using both the Begg and Egger tests. Subgroup analyses were performed to identify the possible sources of heterogeneity. Twenty-four studies involving 35,599 T2DM patients were included in this meta-analysis, of which 20,264 were identified with NAFLD. A high degree of heterogeneity (I = 99.0%, P