INFO: Doctors focus on liver disease linked to obesity - Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease - Keep Your Liver Healthy

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Doctors focus on liver disease linked to obesityhttp://www.charlotte.com Garlochkgarloch@... Could Overtake Other Causes Today's most common liver diseases are cirrhosis from alcohol abuse and hepatitis C, a viral infection often transmitted through sharing of contaminated needles or blood. But a third liver disease is about to make it to the top. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure, is on the rise. It's linked to

the country's obesity epidemic. "That will be the most common form of chronic liver disease in the next decade," predicted Dr. Mark Russo, a liver specialist at Carolinas Medical Center. Russo is planning a research project, with CMC's bariatric surgeons Tim Kuwada and Gersin, to address the problem. They want to see if a medically supervised liquid diet can help obese patients, who are not candidates for surgery, lose enough weight to treat their liver disease. "It takes a long time for liver disease to develop," Russo said. "You can be obese, drink alcohol or have hepatitis C for years. But eventually the liver may become scarred throughout." Russo is one of a half dozen new liver specialists who have been hired by CMC in the past two years as it develops a Center for Liver Diseases and Transplantation. Part of the expansion is in educational programs. CMC already offers residency training in 15 specialties, including general surgery. Over the next year and a half, the hospital will add fellowships in liver-related specialties. Russo and other new specialists will teach those doctors-in-training while also expanding patient care and research. Among the newcomers are Dr. Iannitti, a liver surgeon from Brown University in Rhode Island; Dr. Dries, a gastroenterologist from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston who specializes in endoscopic ultrasound; and Dr. ie, also from Chapel Hill, a surgeon who specializes in robotic surgery for pancreatic

disease. Dr. Herbert Bonkovsky, the hospital's new vice president for research from the University of Connecticut, is also a renowned liver specialist. He brought with him $1.4 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, along with a team of researchers, including Weihong Hou and Jianyu Zheng. CMC also recently hired other basic scientists, Iain McKillop and Eugene Sokolov, formerly with UNC Charlotte's biology department, and Nury Steuerwald, who remains an associate professor at UNCC. Their studies include a $350,000 project about the effects of milk thistle on alcoholic liver disease. Through studies led by Russo and Bonkovsky, Charlotte-area patients can now receive new drug treatments for liver

cancer, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and hemochromatosis, a disorder of iron metabolism. Another study will create a registry of patients whose livers were damaged by certain medications. One example of drug-induced liver injury involved Ketek, an antibiotic found to cause problems in some patients two years after it received federal approval. "Liver injury is the major reason why drugs are abandoned during early development or withdrawn once they've been approved," Bonkovsky said. Keep Your Liver Healthy • Exercise and eat right to maintain a normal body mass index.• If you drink alcohol, do so only in moderation -- fewer than

four drinks per day for men, two for women.• Have children immunized against hepatitis B, a viral infection spread by sexual intercourse.• Check for a family history of liver disease. Hemochromatosis is a common genetic disorder in Caucasians and can be treated by donating blood regularly. Source: Dr. Mark Russo of CarolinasMedicalCenter