A CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY OF CORRELATION BETWEEN BODY MASS INDEX AND LIVER ENZYMES IN ALCOHOLICS.

Abstract

Alcohol consumption, excess body weight, and related health problems have increased rapidly in our society. The hepatic physiology is affected by both ethanol consumption as well as excess body weight. With the increasing prevalence of heavy drinking and obesity, cirrhosis is among the leading causes of death, especially in the middle-aged. Hepatic status is often mirrored by measuring the activities of liver enzymes from serum. The rapid increase in the prevalence of obesity constitutes a major threat to modern health care. Both excess of alcohol consumption & obesity are known to lead to accumulation of fat in hepatic tissues & induce changes in liver derived enzymes in the serum. The aim of this study was to investigate the ef Aim: fects of rather moderate levels of alcohol drinking and excess body weight on the liver enzymes. These effects were studied both separately for each factor and in combination. In this study 205 Study Design: participants were involved as moderate drinkers. The study population was further split into, according to BMI. Serum Alanine AminoTransferase (ALT), Aspartate AminoTransferase (AST), Alkaline Phosphate (ALP) were examined in 205 alcoholic patients. Results: The correlation between BMI and liver enzymes, BMI and AST, BMI and ALT, BMI and Indirect Bilirubin was positive with signicant r value (as per pearson's correlation). It was noted that the liver enzymes increase Conclusion: d as a function of body weight throughout the BMI scale, and the activities were yet higher in moderate drinkers. The statistical results were signicant for the interactions between the effects of moderate drinking and the BMI.