Drinking of alcohol and metabolic factors increase the risk of liver disease

There is an increasing burden of liver disease and liver cancer. The metabolic syndrome and heavy alcohol consumption are associated with increased risks of liver disease, although only a minority of patients with early-stage liver disease (e.g. fatty liver) develop liver failure or liver cancer. Few general population studies have analyzed metabolic predictors of such severe liver complications.

Researchers studied which metabolic factors best predict severe liver complications. Their analysis included people without liver disease who participated in the Finnish population-based Health 2000 Study (2000-2001). The researchers analyzed follow-up data on liver-related hospital admissions, mortality, and liver cancer from national registers.

Some of the participants experienced a severe liver event during follow-up. Factors predictive of liver events were older age, female gender, alcohol use, diabetes, LDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance. Among individuals who consumed higher amounts of alcohol (average alcohol use ?210 g/week for men, ?140 g/week for women), diabetes was the only significant predictor.

Among those who consumed less or no alcohol, older age, alcohol use, smoking, abdominal obesity, LDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance were significant predictors. Alcoholic liver disease ALD and non-alcoholic liver disease NAFLD are considered separate entities, distinguished from each other by an arbitrary threshold of average alcohol intake.

This diagnostic approach assumes that alcohol intake does not affect the course of NAFLD and that the metabolic syndrome is the hallmark of NAFLD is not a factor in ALD. This study reveals that alcohol is a relevant risk factor even when alcohol consumption is within the limits currently used to separate NAFLD from ALD.

Liver disease should perhaps not be considered in terms of mutually exclusive entities of ALD and NAFLD, because in a large number of patients with liver disease, the effect of alcohol is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to separate from the effect of metabolic factors.

 Alcohol use and metabolic factors are taken into account at the same time in order to identify individuals with a high risk for severe liver complications. For a comprehensive liver-risk assessment, lipid abnormalities, abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, and alcohol use should all be considered at the same time.
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Less than six months breastfeeding can raise risk of liver disease

Not breast feeding or stopping before six months raises a baby's  risk of having nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) later on in life.

Human breast milk contain various biologically-active constituents with a protective effect upon obesity.

It was also found that being obese at the early stage of pregnancy increased a baby's risk of the disease, which can lead to serious liver damage.

Smoking in the early days of pregnancy also increased the risk of NAFLD later in life.

 Infants should be fed breast milk exclusively for the first six months of life. Researchers performed liver ultrasound on more than 1,100 adolescents aged 17 years, who have been followed from birth.

Then they examined their medical records to see if there was a link between how long they were breastfed, their mothers' weight and smoking habit in pregnancy.

NAFLD was diagnosed in about 15 per cent of the adolescents examined.
It was found 94 per cent had been breastfed as infants.

The duration of breastfeeding before starting supplementary milk was four months in 55 per cent and six months in 40 per cent.

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