Fatty Liver Disease is one that I'm quite familiar with, my wife suffers from it. The unusual thing with her is that she is in, and has always been in wonderful shape. She has fought by pushing herself even harder when exercising.

I had never heard of it before and the only reason it was found in my wife was because of abnormal readings in a blood test.

Good stuff Dean, people need to know more.

[sarcasm]

But the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has told me that there is no proof obesity is harmful.

[/sarcasm]

Obesity is deadly.

People need to know this.

My wife Was just told she has an enlarged liver and we wouild like to know what symtoms are associated with this illness.

Thank you

I'm a gastroenterologist. I deal with fatty liver every day.

The vast majority of patients have NO symptoms, and are referred to me because of the incidental finding of abnormal liver blood tests taken for another reason, e.g. routine surveillance of people on 'statin' cholesterol drugs.

Occasionally a very enlarged fatty liver can cause right upper abdominal pain/tenderness, but I think I've only seen one or two patients with symptoms I could attribute to the liver. Not that fatty liver patients don't have any symptoms, just that they are almost always due to a non-liver cause, usually their obesity itself. In general, fatty liver is asymptomatic, and 80-90% of the time does no harm. But the other 10-20% will develop cirrhosis just as if they'd drunk a fifth a day for ten years. Since there are usually no symptoms, these unfortunates will not present until there is advanced liver disease/cirrhosis, which DOES cause symptoms-but too late.

The only known treatment at present is weight loss: reduce body fat, you reduce liver fat. So most of the time I tell my patients that if I biopsy the liver and show that there is inflammatory fatty liver, I'll wind up telling them to lose weight--but I can tell them that without biopsying the liver. So lose weight, come back in 6 months, and we'll recheck the liver tests.

There are some diabetes drugs (the 'glitazones') which show some promise in treating fatty liver. Time will tell.

Liver enlargement can come from many things, not only fatty liver. In an asymptomatic patient with no risk factors for liver disease (no alcohol abuse, history of blood transfusion, tattoos, promiscuity, IV drug abuse, certain medications) and an otherwise normal exam except for liver enlargement, no disease is usually found. It's not unusual for patients to be sent to me for liver enlargement who turn out not to have it; it just looked that way on a CT scan or ultrasound. So, Mike C, don't panic. She needs to see a GI doc, who needs to carefully explain what's going on.

The liver is the central clearing house for fat, coming or going. Fat in the diet goes to the liver first, where it is either modified for use as fuel, or packaged for transfer via the blood to the fat tissues. So dietary excess increases liver fat. That's how foie gras (which after all is nothing more than the French word for fatty liver) is made: force-feeding a duck or goose. In periods of starvation, we mobilize fat from our fatty tissues, which goes via the blood to-you guessed it- the liver, for preparation for burning as fuel. So starvation increases liver fat too. Any profound weight gain or loss will at least in the short term increase liver fat. It's only when the liver is chronically fatty that you get trouble.