Alcoholic Liver Disease in Women

Xue

Journal of Women's Health

et al. 2014

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Effect of Drinking on All-Cause Mortality in Women Compared with Men: A Meta-Analysis

Xue

Journal of Women's Health

et al. 2014

Alcoholism Clin & Exp Res

“…The population-based Dionysos study in Italy found that the risk for cirrhosis was twice as high in women as in men with the same amount of alcohol intake (Bellentani et al, 1997(Bellentani et al, , 1999. Several earlier studies also found that the incidence rate of alcohol-induced liver injury is higher and the progression of the condition is faster among women than among men with a similar history of alcohol abuse (Morgan and Sherlock, 1977;Nakamura et al, 1979). Based on findings from these different literatures, it is reasonable to postulate that the effect of heavy drinking on premature death from HCV differs among men and women in the general population.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Alcohol and Hepatitis C Mortality Among Males and Females in the United States: A Life Table Analysis

Chen

Yoon

et al. 2007

Objective: Evidence from previous studies suggests that heavy alcohol use (HAU) exacerbates the rate of fibrosis progression in the liver and results in increased probability for premature death among patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The current study uses population-based mortality data to investigate whether heavy drinking affects the age of death among individuals with HCV and, if so, whether this effect differs between men and women.Methods: A total of 7,263,163 death records in the United States between 2000 and 2002 were drawn from the Multiple Cause of Death (MCD) public-use data files compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes were used to identify the presence of HCV (B17.1 and B18.2) and HAU (as indicated by alcohol-induced medical conditions, F10 and K70) either as the underlying cause or as one of the contributing causes of death. The deaths were divided into 4 distinctive cause-of-death categories: HCV without HAU, HAU without HCV, HCV plus HAU, and all others. The mean ages of death and the cumulative probabilities of death derived from multiple-cause life table were compared across these categories.Results: Hepatitis C virus deaths showed an excessive prevalence of HAU when compared with non-HCV deaths. Compared with deaths of HCV without HAU, the mean age of death was shortened for deaths of HCV plus HAU (from 55.1 to 50.0 years among males, and from 61.0 to 49.1 years among females). The cumulative probability of death before age 65 was much higher for the latter than the former group (0.91 vs 0.68 among males, and 0.88 vs 0.47 among females). While HCV alone showed a disproportionate effect on premature death in males, HAU presented a stronger effect in females, resulting in a ''catching-up'' effect that diminished the gender difference in age of HCV death.Conclusions: This study provides mortality-based evidence to further establish heavy alcohol consumption as one of the key risk factors contributing to premature deaths from HCV in the United States. More importantly, this study, for the first time, presents empirical evidence that alcohol consumption affects men and women differently in HCV mortality.

“…The fact that women are more susceptible to ethanol's hepatotoxic effects has been recognized since 1945 when Spain (26) reported that women were overrepresented in various autopsy series of patients dying of cirrhosis associated with alcohol abuse. Since then, this observation has been repeatedly confirmed (27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). Various factors have been proposed to explain this unique female susceptibility to ethanol-induced hepatic injury and include differences in body composition and size, hormonal status, metabolism, genetic factors and immunologic responses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

The possible occurrence of “alcoholic hepatitis” in a patient with bulimia in the absence of diagnosable alcoholism

et al. 1987

A case of a 20-yr-old female with possible "alcoholic hepatitis" and a mixed micro/macronodular cirrhosis occurring in association with overt bulimia and a history of anorexia nervosa, but without any objective evidence of either alcoholism or alcohol abuse, is reported. The possible factors that may have contributed, either alone or in combination, to produce this unusual occurrence are discussed.