There’s a Fatty Liver Epidemic. AI Could Help Get Ahead of It
Over a billion people worldwide have livers with excess fat, which can lead to a host of medical problems. Researchers think AI tools can spot the condition—and help stop it—early enough to save lives.
All over the world, a slow, insidious change is taking place in the composition of the livers of more than a billion people.
While the presence of fat in a normal, healthy liver is negligible, many adults and even children have livers where fat exceeds 5 percent or even 10 percent of the organ’s total weight. Its unnatural presence causes inflammation, cell damage, and the formation of scar tissue known as fibrosis, all hallmarks of fatty liver disease, a condition that now impacts approximately 30 percent of adults worldwide .
If left to linger, progressive fat accumulation can ultimately lead to liver failure, and it has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and various cancers. But the condition typically develops without noticeable symptoms, so it is rarely detected at an early and treatable stage. Even in cases of cirrhosis or advanced scarring of the liver, three-quarters of people are only diagnosed once their condition has become life-threatening.
As a result, growing numbers of specialists are investigating how AI might help. Jeffrey Lazarus, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, suggests that AI tools could be used to comb through vast numbers of electronic health records and pinpoint the people most likely to have accrued worrying amounts of liver fat.
“AI can retrospectively go through massive numbers of hospital visits and lab reports,” says Lazarus. “You can use that to really prioritize who’s at most risk.”
If fatty liver disease can be identified early, much of the damage is highly reversible. In the initial stages, lifestyle changes such as reducing alcohol intake, losing weight through dietary improvements and exercise, and even drinking more coffee have all been shown to be capable of reversing scarring and inflammation. Even for people with moderate to advanced liver scarring, novel treatments such as the GLP-1 medication semaglutide and a drug called resmetirom have been shown to be highly effective therapeutics.
