The livers as indicators: Drinking at an untimely death is on the rise | Opinion

The abuse of alcohol is on the rise and is contributing to a huge leap in liver disease. This is news that should sober us up, literally

This should lead to stronger action by the federal and state governments against the omnipresence of alcohol consumption as a daily activity for too many d & rsquo; Between us.

from Michigan reported that deaths from liver disease, including cirrhosis, increased by 65% ​​in the United States from 1999 to 2016.

The study, published in the BMJ, formerly British Medical Journal, blame squarely the consumption of alcohol.

The doctors who wrote the study say that this confirms that more young people are drinking to death. He says that adults aged 25 to 34 years had the highest average annual increase in cirrhosis deaths – about 10.5% each year.

Cirrhosis caused a total of 460,760 deaths during the seven-year study period; about one-third have been attributed to hepatocellular carcinoma, a common type of liver cancer that is often caused by cirrhosis, the researchers found.

In 2016 alone, 11,073 lives were lost to liver cancer, which doubled the number of deaths in 1999 According to the Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Approximately 88,000 people die each year from alcohol-related causes, making alcohol the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco and unhealthy eating. The research team discovered cirrhosis and liver cancer deaths rose fastest in the states of Western and Southern Kentucky, New Mexico. Only Maryland has seen a significant decrease in cirrhosis deaths, by about 1 percent.

Medical experts say the study should be a wake-up call to medical providers and lawmakers to focus on preventing disease and modifying risk factors. at the same time, he was shifting resources to cope with the already growing burden of cirrhosis and liver cancer.

– Pittsburgh Post-Gazette