Liver Disease Facts
The liver is the largest and most metabolically complex organ in the body.
Hepatocytes comprise the bulk of the liver, and are responsible for detoxifying the blood as well as making proteins that are essential to life. In a healthy individual, the liver’s unique capability for regeneration enables the organ to combat the continuous damage to hepatocytes that results from its maintenance of the body’s detoxification and metabolism systems.Most liver disease is chronic from diseases such as hepatitis, cirrhosis and cancer.
With the onset of liver disease, hepatocytes are injured or die. If the injury is mild and reversible, the cells may regenerate and the patient may recover to a normal liver. However, when the injury is sustained or more severe, regeneration may be incomplete or healing may occur with the development of fibrosis or scars, which can cause cirrhosis.As the average person ages, their liver mass decreases by 30% on average, which can make a person more vulnerable to acute liver failure, whatever the cause.
Loss of liver function, even when temporary or partial, can result in serious complications and the disruption of essential bodily functions due to metabolic instability such as energy supply, acid-base balance and blood coagulation. If not treated effectively and promptly, patients often become comatose and experience uncontrolled bleeding and sepsis, contributing to multiple organ failure and/or death. An unknown toxin or virus can cause a person’s liver to fail suddenly; this disease state is known as fulminant hepatic failure, or “FHF”. A similar event can cause acute episodes with chronically ill patients.When liver failure occurs, the only current treatment option is transplantation.
All other therapies are largely palliative or do not enable the therapeutic benefits of hepatocyte regeneration and recovery. Liver transplantation is limited by donor liver supply and, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing ("UNOS"), there were ~6,000 liver transplants performed in 2006 however there are more than 16,000 patients on the waiting list. Each year only about one-third of the people who need a donor liver will receive one, and many patients die while waiting.In addition to those numbers reported, there are more patients who qualify medically but are not included on the transplant list for "psycho-social” or other reasons and are "unlisted".
The above numbers are for the USA only but there is a large population of liver disease patients in the rest of the world due to hepatitis and alcoholism. Several countries, such as Japan and India have a cultural aversion to transplantation, have a high incidence of the disease and desperately need treatments. China and other Asian countries have a high prevalence of hepatitis which leads to chronic liver disease, liver failure and liver cancer.