A study has found that the medical condition suffered by one in five youngsters across the UK could be linked to cancer.
The disease is an accumulation of excess fat in the liver and commonly affects those that could afford to lose a few pounds, and new research, which five million adults aged between 20 and 49 took part in, revealed 12 percent of people showing early signs of having it are more likely to be diagnosed with bowel cancer.
Around 13 million individuals suffer with the condition across Britain, yet it moves through them like a ghost by showing no symptoms.
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Researchers from South Korea discovered that individuals below the age of 50 with a history of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) were up 24 percent more at risk of getting bowel cancer than those with no history.
Meanwhile, men are apparently 17 percent more likely than women to get bowel cancer. According to the study, this could be due to their greater smoking and eating habits.
"Our findings revealed a strong link between NAFLD and early-onset colorectal [bowel] cancer in young adults, suggesting the importance of implementing effective preventative strategies, particularly in populations with a growing burden of metabolic dysfunction," the experts said in the study, which was published in ScienceDirect.
Aside from obesity, increased blood sugar levels associated with Type-2 diabetes is strongly linked to NAFLD, as sufferers' cells don't respond to insulin correctly and therefore fat production can skyrocket.
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Elevated cholesterol in the blood can contribute to fat buildup in the liver, while other causes could be diets high in processed foods, sleep apnoea and overdoing it on sugared liquids.
The potentially deadly issue of NAFLD cropped up in 2019 too, when Bristol University tested more than 4,000 men and women born 1991 or 1992 for a study titled 'Children of the 90s'.
According to The Guardian, each of them had undergone an ultrasound scan at the age of 18, which found 2.5 percent of them had NAFLD. Five years after, with the help of fibroscanning, 20 percent of these test subjects came out with fatty deposits on their liver, indicating NAFLD.
Dr Kushala Abeysekera, from the University of Bristol, went on to comment: "We were concerned to find that, at only 24 years of age, one in five had steatosis and one in 40 had evidence of fibrosis, based on elastography results, in a group of largely asymptomatic, predominantly Caucasian young people."
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Professor Philip Newsome, of the European Association for the Study of the Liver, added: "These data highlight the impact of the obesogenic environment and, in particular, its role in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in a much younger sector of the population. This requires swift changes in public policy if we are to defuse the ticking time-bomb of obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease."
Topics: Health, Science, Bowel cancer, Cancer
Dan Seddon