Link psychosis and liver disease

People who have experienced a first episode of psychosis are at high risk of developing short-term liver disease, specifically hepatic steatosis (also known as fatty liver disease). This is the conclusion of a collaborative study led by researchers from the Cyber ​​Mental Health area (CiberSAM) at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville – Seville Institute of Biomedicine (IBIS), and from the Cyber ​​Hepatic and Digestive Diseases area (CiberEHD) at the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital – Valdecilla Health Research Institute (Idival), which publishes the journal “Schizophrenia Research”. Related news “Patients who suffer a first episode of psychosis have a higher risk of presenting weight gain and metabolic alterations such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, or metabolic syndrome”, explains Javier Vázquez Bourgon, a researcher at CiberSAM, the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital (Santander) and the Valdecilla Health Research Institute (Idival) and one of the coordinators of this work. In the general population, it is known that these metabolic alterations are closely associated with the appearance of one of the most common liver diseases, fatty liver (hepatic steatosis), which can evolve into more serious and chronic forms of liver disease. “Given that patients with psychosis have a higher risk of presenting weight gain and metabolic alterations, the objective of this study was to see if they also present liver involvement more frequently,” he points out. of 160 people who had suffered a first episode of psychosis comparing them with 66 individuals without mental pathology, as a control group. In these patients, metabolic and hepatic changes were evaluated over three years, through the fatty liver index (FLI). first psychotic episode, up to a fifth of the patients (21.9%) developed fatty liver”, explains Javier Crespo, head of the CiberEHD group at the Marqués de Valdecilla – Idival Hospital, where this work was carried out. On the contrary, only 3% of the individuals without psychosis belonging to the control group of the study presented hepatic steatosis in that period. “In addition, the presence of fatty liver was associated with a worse evolution in metabolic parameters, and with the appearance of metabolic syndrome and high blood pressure in patients with this mental health disorder”, adds the CiberEHD researcher. “Thanks to this research we have more evidence of the association between psychosis and liver involvement, which emphasizes the importance of including actions aimed at the early detection of metabolic pathology as well as liver pathology (hepatic steatosis) in patients with a first episode of psychosis are in routine practice”, points out Benedicto Crespo Facorro, head of the CiberSAM group at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital and IBIS. “All these data represent an advance in the knowledge of the metabolic impact at the hepatic level in patients with psychosis”, the researchers conclude.