L
asse Berget was 43 years old and weighed 28st. A security
guard from Filtvet, a seaside village in Norway, he had a big
appetite. He could eat eight cheese and salami sandwiches for
breakfast, several hamburgers for lunch and plates of pasta or pizza
for supper. Steadily gaining weight since his twenties, he felt
progressively more tired and suffered increasing aches and pains.Finally, after being nearly bedridden,
he asked his doctor for a checkup.
A blood test showed high levels of
fat in his blood and an ultrasound
scan revealed non-alcoholic fatty
liver disease, or NAFLD, in which fat
deposits form within the organ.
When Lasse researched his
diagnosis, he was scared. “I
realised quickly that the
disease can be deadly,”
he says. If neglected,
it can lead to a lethal
liver-disease stage
or cancer.
Nearly one in four
people in Europe
has NAFLD, according
to a paper published in
the Journal of Hepatology in
September 2018. Linked to obesity
and diabetes, it’s a lifestyle disease
born of carbohydrate overload
and lack of exercise. “If you’re
burning fewer calories than you’re
eating, your body starts storing fat,
and many people have a genetic
predisposition to store it
in the liver,” says Dr Ashley
Barnabas, a hepatologist at King’sCollege Hospital NHS Foundation
Trust in London.
According to a 2018 study,
Europe has the highest rates of
liver disease in the world. Besides
NAFLD, other contributing factors
are alcohol overuse, medication
overuse and infectious hepatitis—a
liver inflammation caused by
viruses. Overall, 29 million
people in the European
Union have a chronic
liver condition. Every
year about 47,000
people in the EU die
from liver cancer and
across Europe 170,000
die from cirrhosis—the
breakdown of the organ
caused by scar tissue from long-
term disease or alcohol abuse—
which covers the main causes.
Unfortunately, the early stages of
liver disease produce no symptoms.
Some NAFLD patients may feel
tired or nauseous, but many don’t,
and their condition can only be
diagnosed by checking liver enzymes
on a blood test, or an ultrasound
or another imaging test. Currently,SURVIVING AN EPIDEMIC40 • JULY 2019