To the Editor of The: Indian Medical Gazette. Sir,?It is accepted by the majority, in the present state of our knowledge, that alcohol is a very common cause of the cirrhosis of the liver, though it is not the only cause. The publication of an ingenious theory by Dr. M. Umar in the Indian Medical Gazette of November 1921, about the manufacture of alcohol in the stomach from the food by the acti...

The fatty acid composition of serum phospholipids were analyzed in 20 patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis (11 with malnutrition and 9 with acceptable nutritional status); 25 healthy age and sex-matched adults were used as controls. Cirrhotic patients showed higher levels of palmitic acid and total saturated fatty acids than healthy subjects. Total n-6 and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PU...

Liver disease is the greatest cause of death related to alcohol and a major public health problem. While excessive alcohol intake results in hepatosteatosis in most individuals, this can progress in some to more severe forms of liver disease including fibrosis and cirrhosis. An ongoing challenge in the management of alcoholic liver disease is the identification of liver injury early in the dise...

BACKGROUND A minority of persons at risk develop liver cirrhosis, but knowledge of risk modulators is sparse. Several reports suggest that coffee drinking is associated with lower cirrhosis risk. METHODS We studied 125,580 multiethnic members of a comprehensive prepaid health care plan without known liver disease who supplied baseline data at voluntary health examinations from 1978 to 1985. S...

INTRODUCTION Stronger alcohol policies predict decreased alcohol consumption and binge drinking in the United States. We examined the relationship between the strength of states' alcohol policies and alcoholic cirrhosis mortality rates. METHODS We used the Alcohol Policy Scale (APS), a validated assessment of policies of the 50 US states and Washington DC, to quantify the efficacy and impleme...

AIM To estimate sex differences in health-care utilization among harmful/hazardous drinkers in the period before alcoholic cirrhosis diagnosis, and estimate sex differences in the extent to which alcohol use and brief alcohol interventions were documented for these individuals compared with a control cohort. DESIGN Retrospective study using linked general practice and hospital admissions data...

To the Editor: Oxidative stress, which can be induced by iron overload, may play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of alcoholic liver disease (ALD) which is characterized by fatty liver, hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (1). Increasing evidence indicates that ALD is a multifactorial disease in which both environmental and multiple genetic factors play a role. The hem...

BACKGROUND Accurate evaluation of the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in patients awaiting liver transplantation is important because they have a greater risk of impaired renal function. A major percentage of these patients have alcoholic cirrhosis, and the accuracy of bedside used GFR estimates have not been specifically evaluated in this group. The aim of this study was to evaluate the valid...

Enhanced serum IgA concentrations are common in alcoholic liver cirrhosis, but functional differences between IgA subclasses and their relation with interleukin-6 (IL-6) have not been described. Distinct immunoregulatory mechanisms may exist that selectively affect one subclass. This possibility prompted us to investigate the distribution of IgA1 and IgA2 subclasses in the serum of 25 heavy alc...