Livers and Liquor

By noval

What causes alcoholics to develop cirrhosis and other frequently fatal liver diseases? Many doctors, noting the tendency of alcoholics to drink more than they eat, believe that poor nutrition plays a key role. But two researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York now claim that it is drink alone that does the damage. A four-year study has convinced them that even in the well-nourished, alcohol can be lethal to the liver.

Drs. Emanuel Rubin and Charles Lieber selected baboons for their study because the primates live as long as 15 years, far longer than most other laboratory animals, and have livers that are similar to man's. The researchers put 26 baboons on highprotein, high-vitamin diets, but for 13 of the animals substituted ethanol, or grain alcohol, for much of the carbohydrate portion of the dietary requirements. The alcohol provided the animals with fully half their caloric intake.

The baboons responded to the booze --equivalent to about a fifth per day for a man--just as humans would. They became intoxicated and, ultimately, dependent upon drink. Two of the animals became so addicted to alcohol that they experienced withdrawal symptoms, including what seemed to be delirium tremens, or DTs, when off the bottle.

But the most significant result of the study was the destruction of the myth that alcoholic liver damage is the result of a bad diet rather than booze. All of the animals who were kept on the drinker's diet for anywhere from nine months to four years developed some form of alcoholic liver damage. Seven of the baboons developed fatty livers, and four contracted alcoholic hepatitis. Two animals, kept on the bottle for four years, developed cirrhosis, the progressive and severe hardening and contraction of the liver.

The study provided other insights into alcoholism, which Rubin and Lieber consider to be one of man's worst "environmental" ailments. Because pure alcohol was used exclusively, it became evident that the toxic effects were the result of the alcohol itself and not, as some researchers have suggested, caused by any of the impurities or additives found in beer, wine or hard liquor. Concludes Rubin: "You can't protect yourself against alcoholic damage by eating well; what counts is the total amount of alcohol you drink."

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