Alcohol and Liver Disease (original) (raw)

A lcohol (ethanol) is one of the most commonly abused drugs throughout the world. In the United States, about half of the adult population actively consumes alcoholic beverages and about 15 to 20 million people suffer from alcoholism (1). According to a 1990 survey by the US Department of Health and Human Services, alcohol is the third leading cause of preventable mortality, behind cigarette smoking and obesity, with about 100,000 deaths annually and an annual economic burden of more than $100 billion in the US (2,3). Alcohol consumption can lead to a variety of abnormalities in the liver including steatosis, alcoholic hepatitis, and hepatic fibrosis, which typically precede the development of alcoholic cirrhosis, an end-stage liver disease most often requiring liver transplantation. Alcoholic cirrhosis is also a major risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma that accounts for nearly 6% of all human cancers. Alcoholic liver disease affects more than 2 million people in the United States. According to a US surveillance report, liver cirrhosis was the 10 th leading cause of mortality in 1997 accounting for approximately 25,000 deaths in that year (4). Another 10,000 died of liver cancer, which in the majority of the cases involves underlying cirrhosis.