Extra Virgin Olive Oil Reduces the Risk of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Females but Not in Males: Results from the NUTRIHEP Cohort

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most prevalent chronic liver disease worldwide. One way to resolve this reversible condition is by making dietary changes. Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is often associated with an improvement in this disease. The aim of this study was to explore the protective role of EVOO on NAFLD conditions, stratified by gender. Methods: The study cohort included 1426 participants assessed in the second recall of the NUTRIHEP cohort (2014–2018), subdivided by gender and dividing the EVOO intake into quartiles of daily gram intake. Results: The results indicated a protective role of the last quartile of EVOO only for female subjects, OR = 0.43, p = 0.02, 0.21 to 0.85 at 95% C.I., whereas in the male sub-cohort, the effect was not statistically significant. Conclusions: The protective role of EVOO is different between genders. This difference has not been explored in the literature, so we conclude that this is one of the few papers in the literature to evaluate a gender difference in the intestinal absorption of humans based on an epidemiological study.