The liver carries out many essential functions, including clearing toxins from the body, manufacturing bile and certain proteins, storing certain minerals and vitamins, and breaking down red blood cells. Damage to the liver has a wide impact on the body's functioning, and can be caused by a variety of factors including drugs, alcohol, poisoning by toxins, metabolic disorders, and viral or bacterial infections.
Types
Liver damage falls into one of three broad categories: non-alcoholic, alcoholic and liver damage that occurs during pregnancy. Non-alcoholic and alcoholic liver disease categories include fatty liver, the most common and earliest stage of liver disease; fibrosis, the beginning of scar tissue within the liver; cirrhosis, the late stage of fibrosis when liver function severely deteriorates; and liver failure, when the liver can no longer perform essential functions. Non-alcoholic liver disease that progresses is often called NASH, or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
Liver failure can occur acutely as part of chronic liver disease. Inflammation of the liver can also occur at any stage. In pregnancy-related liver disease, damage rarely progresses beyond fatty liver, but can in rare cases, can become fulminant, or rapidly progressing, and cause liver failure.
Specific Causes
While only excessive alcohol causes alcoholic liver disease, and only pregnancy causes pregnancy-related liver disease, non-alcoholic liver disease has numerous causes. The most common chronic causes include obesity, the most common cause of NASH, according to the American College of Gastroenterologists, and viruses such as hepatitis. Inherited diseases such as galactosemia, an inability to properly digest sugars, can also lead to chronic liver disease. Infection, poisoning, or overdoses of medication can lead to acute liver damage, the American Liver Foundation warns.
Symptoms
Early liver damage often has no symptoms. As liver diseases progresses, jaundice, a yellow coloring to the skin and whites of the eyes, fatigue, loss of appetite, dark or tea-colored urine, diarrhea, weight loss, fluid retention in the stomach and abdominal pain on the upper right side of the abdomen, may occur.
Diagnosis
Liver damage can be suspected through serum liver enzyme elevation and seen on abdominal ultrasound, CT scan or MRI. For a definitive diagnosis of the exact degree of damage, a liver biopsy, the removal of a small piece of liver tissue to examine cells, helps establish the diagnosis, the University of Illinois explains.
Treatment
Treatment for common causes of liver disease varies with the cause. For alcohol-related liver disease, stopping drinking can improve liver disease within six months if damage hasn't progressed to cirrhosis, the Merck Manual states. For pregnancy-related liver disease such as fatty liver of pregnancy, delivery of the infant usually cures the disease, usually without long-term complications, the March of Dimes explains. Non-alcoholic liver disease treatment depends on the type of disease. Losing weight helps those with obesity-related disease. Any type of liver disease can require liver transplant, if lesser treatments fail.
