A silent epidemic is becoming a leading driver of liver transplants. “This is a silent process, much like high blood pressure or diabetes,” explains Manal Abdelmalek, a liver disease specialist at Duke University. But unlike high blood pressure or diabetes, which doctors can detect with cheap and easy tests during a routine check-up, NASH is difficult to diagnose. Most people with scarring on their liver don’t display symptoms, and right now there’s no straightforward biomarker that a routine blood panel would pick up. The only reliable measure of fibrosis is a liver biopsy. Moreover, the disease progresses slowly—over years or even decades—and researchers have yet to figure out when someone with a fatty liver is at risk for developing the inflammation and fibrosis that define NASH. That subtle, slow-moving process begins with the build-up of fat in the liver, a condition called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD, because it is not driven by alcohol consumption. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, up to 20% of the American population has NAFLD, which occurs when fat makes up more than 5% of the liver. http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i39/...Member&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=CEN
NASH is difficult to diagnose. Most people with scarring on their liver don’t display symptoms, and right now there’s no straightforward biomarker that a routine blood panel would pick up. The only reliable measure of fibrosis is a liver biopsy. Please read the post and the reference.
For the benefit of readers, Tim appears to be talking about Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis or Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.
I'd certainly never heard of this. It appears to be yet another consequence of the appalling epidemic of gross obesity in the USA. The Coca-Cola culture....