The Liver Meeting is scheduled to assemble in Washington, D.C. next month and excitement is escalating as the results of a study of nearly 2,300 obese diabetic patients surfaces. As it turns out, genetics explains “the cause” of both non-alcoholic forms of fatty-liver disease (NAFLD) as well as advanced forms of NAFLD like steatohepatitis, also known as NASH.
As one Penn State investigator stated, “we discovered genes that may help identify those patients most at risk for the types of liver disease so severe they could require transplants.”
MY TAKE
In years past, when patients had elevated liver enzymes, the doctor assumed that they drank alcohol that caused the elevations, since alcohol is known to injure the liver. But more often now, people who never drink alcohol are experiencing liver diseases. This is, of course, because alcohol is simply one of many mycotoxins (fungal poisons) that can cause liver diseases, including cancer. How I wish our doctors knew this…
Mycotoxins are mutagenic; they cause genetic mutations. It is very likely that a large percentage of obese diabetic patients have been exposed to mycotoxins via inhalation in a moldy home, the consumption of grains impregnated with mold or the taking of many rounds of medicinal mycotoxins like antibiotics. These researchers are merely seeing the end result of mycotoxin poisoning in these obese diabetic patients and believe they have made a new discovery.
How I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the Liver Meeting. Statistically speaking, with an abundance of excited geneticists in attendance, there is probably a 1.0346525% chance that the word “mycotoxin” will ever be mentioned, yet it is a scientifically documented cause of liver disease. I hurt for these patients, because, don’t people perish for lack of knowledge???