Alcoholic liver disease articles from across Nature Portfolio

Gut microbiota composition is altered in patients with alcohol use disorder, and fecal microbiota transplant reduced alcohol craving in patients with alcohol use disorder and liver cirrhosis in a phase 1 clinical trial. Here the authors used stool samples collected in the trial to report that this phenotype is transmissible via microbial transfer to germ free mice, as assessed by reduced ethanol acceptance, intake and preference.

Alcohol consumption promotes neutral fat accumulation in the liver. Here, the authors report that alcohol induces aryl hydrocarbon receptor AhR in the liver, and hepatocyte-specific AhR deletion protects against alcohol induced accumulation potentially via transcriptional regulation of Protein phosphatase 2 regulatory subunit Bdelta and subsequent effects on autophagy.

Interogation of mass-spectrometry-based proteomics of liver and plasma from a cohort of patients with alcohol-related liver disease identifies noninvasive biomarkers associated with early stages of disease progression, including significant fibrosis, inflammation and steatosis.