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Factors likely to cause liver disease

Researchers have issued a warning to the overweight women who engage in a lot of alcohol drinking. As per their findings, the researchers say that this could harm the liver severely. According to one of the studies, obese and overweight women who engaged in heavy drinking had high risk of developing chronic liver disease, which could probably kill them as well. As per the findings of the other study, people who already have alcoholic cirrhosis had a high risk of suffering from liver cancer as well as those who had type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and are obese or overweight.

In the first study, over 107000 women were included from United Kingdom. These women were classified according to either they had a high or low BMI- body mass index. BMI is used to measure the amount of fat in the body based weight and height. The women were also categorized either as high or low alcohol drinkers. Low alcohol consumption was taken to be from zero to 15 alcohol units per week and high alcohol consumption was taken to be over 15 alcohol units per week. The National Health Service in UK says that 15 alcohol units is equivalent to about 6 beer pints or nine small wine glasses in a week.

Helping people in the risk of developing chronic liver disease

In the study, it was reported that women who consumed high amount of alcohol and had high BMI were more vulnerable to suffering from chronic liver disease compared to the other women. The findings were presented in an International Liver Congress held in Netherlands. Dr. Daniele Prati added that the findings would be significantly influenced how millions of people all over the world who were at the risk of developing chronic liver disease would be helped. The research team said that women had a higher risk considering that they are twice sensitive to alcohol compared to men. As such, even at lower dosages of alcohol, women could still suffer from liver damage related to alcohol. He explained that this also meant shorter alcohol duration in women could also make them more prone to the condition.

Based on the research, it was concluded that people with high levels of alcohol consumption and low BMI are in a greater risk of chronic liver disease development unlike women who don’t drink regularly and have high BMI. However, there is need for more research on this area, continued Prati but this research was critical in forming the basis for future researches. While it is true that the study found that there was a link with liver disease, heavy drinking and overweight in women, there was no concrete prove for existence of cause- effect relationship. As such, the conclusions made are better taken as preliminary results until another research is undertaken to reinforce or disapprove this.