If most people could name one thing about the liver, it would probably be its function to deal with alcohol ion the body. Many also know the abuse the liver of a binge-drinker may go through. However, is alcohol doing the greatest amount of damage to your liver?
Studies have shown that there is another possible factor in the damage of a person’s liver. Obesity, it is believed, is more dangerous than alcohol consumption when it comes to liver diseases.
A study was done based on data obtained from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening database. Over 107,000 women reported their BMI’s and alcohol consumption rates. Without a true control group, this study would be observational.
Through the obtained data, investigators looked at hospital records and death certificates with any mention of liver disease. They proceeded to follow up with the people being observed. The findings can be seen in the table below from Medscape.com.
Table. Influence of Weight and Alcohol on Risk for Liver Outcomes
| BMI (kg/m²) | Alcohol (Units/Week) | Adjusted Hazard Ratio (95% Confidence Interval) |
| <30 | <21 | 1.0 |
| ≥30 | <21 | 1.7 (1.4–2.0) |
| <30 | ≥21 | 1.8 (1.0–3.4) |
| ≥30 | ≥21 | 2.4 (0.8–7.6) |
Its findings suggest that non-binge drinking women who are obese are at as great of a risk for liver disease as binge-drinkers who are at a healthy BMI. The findings are surprising because of the amount of attention the affects of drinking has on the liver gets.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now being more closely studied as a result of the idea that obesity has a great affect on the liver, like alcohol. NAFLD is caused by a buildup of fat in the liver. Those that suffer from NAFLD are supposedly not likely to show symptoms until the very late stages of the disease.
What about obesity makes it as dangerous to the liver as alcohol? Possibly the fact that the fats go to the liver and cannot be broken down which causes fatty liver, unlike alcoholic fatty liver, which occurs because of the production of toxic metabolites.
To wrap it all up, either way, the liver is under severe abuse when exposed to obesity or heavy amounts of drinking. Both are major causes of the rise of liver disease.
http://www2.kenes.com/liver-congress/scientific/Documents/Abstract_book.pdf: source of study
Something that people underestimate the impact of is the title of the blog, your title was easy to understand and caught my attention. I also feel that your placement of a simple, yet very interesting picture right under the title will be the reason that your blog is viewed compared to others of it kind. Your thesis question asked what was causing a persons liver the most pain. Like you said most people only know of the livers function because of its connection to alcohol. Although you never mentioned other things that effect the liver until you introduce obesity. I know that smoking tobacco has a large negative effect to the liver, but how large are these effects compared to obesity and binge drinking?
You used a study that only observed women, and the comment above asks why you didn’t include a study about men, although I can imagine that it would be easier to see the effects of drinking and obesity in women because they are known to be unable to consume as much food or alcohol as men. In the link attached the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse examines how women and men differ with effects from alcohol as well as metabolism rates which can be connected to binge drinking and obesity. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa46.htm Although I think it would be more interesting to compare the findings from the study you mentioned in your blog to a one about childhood obesity, especially because of the childhood obesity national health crisis. If you took a randomized group of college students that go out twice a weekend and saw the effects of their liver compared to students the same age that are in the early stages of obesity. The results of this study would show the effects of age and gender on the liver.
I thought that the topic of this blog was very interesting! The liver is such an essential part of the body, and it is scary how many organs obesity impacts. One thing that I am wondering is what the increase of risk would be if a woman was obese AND a heavy drinker. http://www.naturalhealthadvisory.com/daily/natural-health-101/alcohol-and-liver-disease-obesity-worse-than-alcohol-for-women/ While this study here explains that women who are obese and drink heavily are at a significantly greater risk of liver disease, they fail to say the relative risk. You also mention that the information from this study was drawn from a trial of ovarian cancer screening, and therefore this may suffer from the Texas sharpshooter problem, which we discussed in class. I also find it very interesting that this study was conducted on only females as opposed to males. Typically for studies, especially in the health sector, they are primarily performed on men. Something else that would be interesting to compare would be the rates of liver disease for men and women, some of whom are obese and some of whom are excessive drinkers. Overall, interesting post and great use of graphics!