Another Drink?

It’s common knowledge that alcohol damages the liver, and these days scientists have a good idea how that damage occurs. They even know what tips the balance from reversible liver injury, which might happen after a night of binge drinking, to chronic liver disease, which might occur if a person consistently drinks heavily. The liver cells’ power-producing mitochondria (red) bear the brunt of alcohol-induced damage – a result of the toxins produced when alcohol is metabolised. Notice the extent of mitochondrial damage (green) in the liver of an alcohol-fed mouse (right) compared with that of a healthy mouse (left). After a short bout of drinking, damaged mitochondria are degraded and replaced with healthy ones. The problem with sustained alcohol use, however, is that the continuous mitochondrial degradation depletes the cell of energy, impairing various functions and causing a cascade of injury, inflammation and fibrosis that eventually results in full-blown liver disease.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

Writer

Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

Website

• Image by Dr. John Lemasters and Dr. Zhi Zhong, Medical University of South Carolina
• Departments of Drug Discovery & Biomedical Science, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Autophagy, March 2022