Fig. 1

Flow of the subjects across the study. The base collective for the present study consisted of the 2,445 subjects of the EMIL study. Of these, 258 subjects were excluded due to age < 18 years; 69 due to excessive alcohol consumption (>40 g/day in males and > 20 g/day in females); 146 due to past or current hepatitis B or hepatitis C infections;intake of iodone (n = 344), antithyroid agents (n = 2) or thyroid hormones (n = 437); and 1 due to hemochromatosis. Incomplete data, laboratory values or other data were also exclusion criteria. Each box represents an exclusion criterion and contains the corresponding number of subjects in relation to the total collective. An individual subject may meet multiple exclusion criteria. For the present study, the resulting collective consisted of 1,276 individuals