The study found that the rise in cirrhosis deaths was driven by alcohol-related liver disease, as opposed to other types of liver disease, which can be the result of genetics or various viruses. The study data revealed that between 2009 and 2016, young people had a 10.5 percent average annual increase in cirrhosis deaths (mainly due to excessive alcohol consumption), the highest of all the age groups. “This is a completely unacceptable statistic,” says study author Elliot Tapper, MD, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “[Alcohol-related liver disease] is a totally preventable condition.” Dr. Tapper and his colleague Neehar Parikh, MD, a clinical lecturer at the University of Michigan, analyzed death certificate data from 1999 through 2016 from the National Vital Statistics System as well as population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. RELATED: 8 Questions You Should Be Able to Answer About Your Liver
Liver Cancer Also on the Rise
In addition to the rise in cirrhosis deaths, their findings revealed that the rates of death due to liver cancer (a complication of cirrhosis) almost doubled throughout the study. This was true of all demographic subgroups, except for Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, whose death rate fell by 2.7 percent per year. The study comes just a few days after a similar report, using the same data set, was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). A key finding of the NCHS report was that death rates from liver cancer have been on the rise since 2000, ultimately increasing by 43 percent over a 16-year period. Tapper’s study differs from the NCHS report because it looked at the data in a bit more detail, he explains. “What they did is simply said, ‘Here’s the rate of change from 2000 to 2016,’ but you don’t get a sense [of] when that trend began and if it parallels with other changes in liver disease,” says Tapper. RELATED: Immunotherapy Drug Opdivo Approved for Liver Cancer
Economic Woes May Have Escalated Risky Drinking Behavior
In The BMJ article, Tapper notes that the worsening trends started after the Great Recession of 2008. States were impacted economically in varying ways, which may help explain why some states, particularly Kentucky and New Mexico, had faster rises in cirrhosis and liver-cancer-related deaths. Tapper also points to gender-specific differences. “Since increases in mortality were greatest for young men, these data may dovetail with trends in alcohol abuse established to predominantly affect younger men; becoming unemployed is linked with alcohol abuse in young men but not older persons or women,” writes Tapper. Although those are possible reasons for the rapid rise, the study authors didn’t look at the patients’ charts or have individual conversations with each person, so there’s no way to know what was actually going on in their lives at the time. Avoiding alcohol is only one way to prevent cirrhosis. According to the Mayo Clinic, other prevention methods include eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, and reducing the risk of hepatitis by not sharing needles or having unprotected sex.
