Liver disease could cause ‘health tsunami’

IT’S the hidden epidemic affecting 5.5 million Australians. Most sufferers don’t know they have it, yet it’s driving up transplant and cancer rates and contributing to a range of severe illnesses – and even death.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affects three times more people than diabetes and nearly one million more people than heart disease but it has no early symptoms and cancers caused by it are usually diagnosed too late.

Doctors are warning we are facing a health “tsunami” as one in three adults develops the disease and they blame the nation’s obesity epidemic for the condition.

About 1400 people are dying from liver cancer each year and liver transplants, which cost $200,000, are now second only to kidney transplants.

Fatty liver disease is now the third most common reason for a liver transplant and transplants linked to the disease have doubled in the past 10 years.

Unless something is done, eight million people will have the condition by 2030, says Liver Foundation chairman Ben Richardson.

“We are certainly on the edge of an epidemic, if not arrived at an epidemic, of fatty liver disease,” says liver expert Professor Gary Jeffrey.

“In my view, very few people are aware of the consequences of severe liver disease. You can die of liver failure. Primary liver cancer has not got the profile it needs.”

Fatty liver disease happens when there is a build-up of excess fat in the liver cells, which leads to inflammation of the liver, scarring it and causing it to harden.