Liver Injury: Risk Threshold Of Daily Alcohol Intake And Drinking Duration

Main Category: Liver Disease / Hepatitis
Also Included In: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Article Date: 22 May 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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Alcoholic threshold effect rather than a dose-response effect on mortality from alcohol-related liver injury. Alcohol intake, rather than the type of alcoholic beverage, was more significant to liver injury.

This study, performed by a team led by by Professor You-Ming Li from Zhejiang University, is described in a research article published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

The study shows that the risk threshold of daily alcohol intake and the duration of drinking inducing alcohol-related liver injury is 20 g and 5 years in the island population of China. Liver injury induced by obesity should be concerned.

In the view of the authors, to date no clear explanation has existed to evaluate alcohol-related liver injury in China's island population.

The island population east of China is a specific cluster population. Their alcohol consumption is very high compared to that of the mainland population. However, there is a lack of population-based alcoholic liver disease (ALD) studies on China's islands.

The authors conducted a population-based case-control study to investigate the association of alcohol dose, duration of drinking and obesity with liver injury in the island population east of China.

The results will be useful in further analyzing the differences between the island population and the inland population, in terms of drinking habits, diet habits, life and work pressure and genotype. The island population should be further studied in follow-up research.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Reference: Shen Z, Li YM, Yu CH, Shen Y, Xu L, Xu CF, Chen JJ, Ye H, Xu GY. Risk factors for alcohol-related liver injury in the island population from China: A Population-based Case-control study. World J Gastroenterol 2008; 14(14): 2255-2261 http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/14/2255.asp

Correspondence to: Professor You-Ming Li, Department of Gastroenterology, the First Affiliated Hospital, Medicine School, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China.

About World Journal of Gastroenterology

World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H pylori infection for providing a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2003-2000 IF: 3.318, 2.532, 1.445 and 0.993. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. The WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.

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Source: Jing Zhu
World Journal of Gastroenterology