In a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers found that people with advanced liver scarring caused by obesity, diabetes and related disorders are dying of liver disease.
The study brings new urgency to tests for liver disease, particularly in populations with Type 2 diabetes.
Many people believe that only excess alcohol consumption causes liver diseases.
However, a quarter of adults worldwide have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition where excess fat is stored in the liver and is more closely linked to obesity and diabetes than alcohol consumption.
Most people don’t know they have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or are at high risk for it.
Left untreated, the disease can progress to an advanced form, where the buildup of fat in the liver can cause inflammation, scarring (known as fibrosis) and full-blown cirrhosis that leaves the liver permanently damaged.
Patients typically are diagnosed when the disease is advanced and a transplant is the only option. The number of liver transplants in the U.S. has gone up every year since 2012, straining supply.
In this study, researchers followed more than 1,700 patients for a median of four years, including some for as many as 10 years, to assess their outcomes.
They found that patients with advanced fibrosis are more likely to die, especially after gastrointestinal hemorrhaging or fluid accumulation in the abdomen and progressive deterioration of brain function due to the liver disease.
The results confirmed that people who have very scarred livers are the most at risk for death.
The results have implications for both the identification and treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Drugs that stop or reverse fibrosis progression could save a significant number of lives.
No medicines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or its more advanced version, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
In the U.S., it’s estimated that there are 2 million and 1.3 million individuals living with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and fibrosis stages three and four, respectively. Based on mortality rates observed in Sanyal’s study, around 40,000 of those people die every year.
If you care about liver health, please read studies about COVID-19 vaccine protection is lower and slower in people with liver diseases and findings of a major cause of fatty liver disease, leaky gut.
For more information about liver disease, please see recent studies about prebiotic supplement may help treat fatty liver disease and results showing that high blood pressure and fatty liver don’t add up in death risk.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. One author of the study is Arun Sanyal, M.D.
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