Objective: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is associated with abnormalities in basal glucose and free fatty acid (FFA) metabolism, multi-organ insulin resistance and alterations in lipoprotein kinetics. These metabolic outcomes can be evaluated in vivo by using stable isotopically labeled tracer methods. An understanding of the reproducibility of these measures is necessary to ensure adequate statistical power in studies designed to evaluate metabolic function in subjects with NAFLD.

Methods: We determined the degree of intra-individual variability of skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and hepatic insulin sensitivity and basal plasma glucose, FFA, and very-low-density lipoprotein triglyceride and apolipoprotein B-100 (apoB-100) kinetics in eight obese subjects with NAFLD (age: 44 ± 3 years; body mass index: 38.2 ± 1.7 kg m(-2); intrahepatic triglyceride content: 24.5 ± 3.9%), by using the hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp technique and stable isotope-labeled tracer methods and mathematical modeling on two separate occasions ∼2 months apart.

Results: The intra-individual variability (coefficient of variation) ranged from 6% for basal glucose production to 21% for insulin-stimulated glucose disposal (percentage increase from basal). We estimated that a 25% difference in any outcome measure can be detected with a sample size of ≤ 8 subjects for paired studies and ≤ 15 subjects per group for unpaired studies, assuming an α value of 0.05 and a β value of 0.20 (that is, 80% power).

Conclusion: These results demonstrate that only a small number of subjects are needed to detect clinically relevant effects in insulin sensitivity and hepatic lipoprotein metabolism in obese subjects with NAFLD, and will be useful to determine appropriate sample size for future metabolic studies.