April 19, 2023
The association between excessive alcohol consumption and liver disease is well documented. In fact, the effect on alcohol consumption levels during the COVID-19 pandemic has more recently been investigated. In a 2022 Hepatology article, researchers estimated that the one-year increase in alcohol consumption during the pandemic would result in an additional 8,000 deaths related to alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) and 18,700 additional cases of decompensated cirrhosis in the United States alone. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, estimations show there was a 24% increase in the amount of alcohol supermarkets sold in the financial year 2020/2021 compared to the year before. Concurrently, alcohol-specific deaths increased by 20% in 2020, with ALD accounting for just over 80% of those deaths. With the only effective treatment for patients whose liver disease has become irreversible being transplantation, the impact of COVID-19 is significant: in 2021, the British Liver Trust estimated there was a 25% decrease in donors. It is therefore critically important that strategies to slow or halt the progression of this disease are implemented before the patient reaches end-stage liver disease.