News by Subject Medicine & Health

Non-alcoholic fatty liver, NAFLD, is associated with several health risks. According to a new registry study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, NAFLD is linked to a 17-fold increased risk of liver cancer. The findings, published in Hepatology, underscore the need for improved follow-up of NAFLD patients with the goal of reducing the risk of cancer.

Researchers have developed a novel mouse model that reproduces many key features of human non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a little-understood condition that significantly increases the risk of inflammation, fibrosis and liver cancer and ultimately requires liver transplant.

The top priority in the field of transplantation is to ensure that donor organs are allocated to the patients with the greatest need. In a large-scale joint international project, conducted by the Medical University of Vienna and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, researchers have made a significant step forward to improve prediction of survival on the waiting list for liver transplantation by including additional laboratory parameters.

In the latest in their series of investigations on metabolic and bacterial liver disease, researchers from the University of Tsukuba found that people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and gum disease benefitted from engaging in regular exercise because it improved their body's own physiology functions and reduced the harmful effects of the bacterial populations residing within the mouth.

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare, chronic, inflammatory disease of the bile ducts and is difficult to treat, since its causes have not yet been adequately researched. An international research consortium led by MedUni Vienna has now succeeded in identifying a new prognostic factor for PSC from liver biopsies. This is so-called cellular ER stress.

A review of more than 20 studies by researchers at Arizona State University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggests that nonalcoholic fatty-liver disease (NAFLD) is a growing dietary problem for children across the globe. NAFLD affects more than 1-in-10 children in the U.S. and now is the nation's most common chronic liver disease within this population. The analyses were published recently in the journal, Pediatric Obesity.

Researchers found that mice lacking the circadian clock gene called Rev-erb in the brain show characteristics similar to those of human dawn phenomenon in type2 diabetes.