You are here

  • Home
  • Online First
  • Modest alcohol consumption decreases the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a meta-analysis of 43 175 individuals

Article Text

Article menu

other Versions

Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Modest alcohol consumption decreases the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a meta-analysis of 43 175 individuals
  1. Silvia Sookoian1,2,3,
  2. Gustavo O Castaño2,3,
  3. Carlos J Pirola4
  1. 1Department of Clinical and Molecular Hepatology, Institute of Medical Research A Lanari-IDIM, University of Buenos Aires—National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  2. 2Research Council in Health, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  3. 3Liver Unit, Medicine and Surgery Department, Hospital Abel Zubizarreta, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  4. 4Department of Molecular Genetics and Biology of Complex Diseases, Institute of Medical Research A Lanari-IDIM, University of Buenos Aires—National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  1. Correspondence to Dr Silvia Sookoian, Department of Clinical and Molecular Hepatology, Institute of Medical Research A Lanari-IDIM, University of Buenos Aires—National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires 1427, Argentina; ssookoian{at}lanari.fmed.uba.ar

https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2013-305718

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Epidemiological studies suggested that the prevalence and the disease severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are lower for people who drink modest amounts of alcohol than those who are abstainers. Nevertheless, the evidence is still inconclusive because some recently published studies1 showed that modest alcohol consumption (MAC) increases hepatic fat without increasing the risk of advanced fibrosis.

    Remarkably, we found in our population that MAC has a beneficial effect in preventing not only NAFLD but the main features of the metabolic syndrome, including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance and C-reactive protein levels. Accordingly, NAFLD and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) prevalence, liver enzymes and inflammatory markers were lower in subjects who took modest amounts of alcohol than those who are abstainers (table 1).

    View this table:
    • In this window
    • In a new window
    Table 1

    Clinical and biochemical characteristics of the Argentinean population according to drinking status: non-drinkers versus modest drinkers

    Hence, we propose to take advantage of meta-analysis to estimate from published data …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SSdesigned the study, collected data, analysed data, collected patients’ data, performed liver biopsy and wrote the manuscript. GC collected patients’ data and performed LB. CJP designed the study, collected data, analysed data and wrote the manuscript.

    • Funding This study was supported in part by grants UBACYT CM04 (Universidad de Buenos Aires), PICT 2008-1521 and 2010-0441 (Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica).

    • Competing interests SS and CJP belong to Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnicas (CONICET).

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval Ethical Committee of the Hospital Zubizarreta. GCBA.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.