Chronic liver disease in abusers of alcohol and parenteral drugs: a report of 204 consecutive biopsy-proven cases.

We studied a consecutive series of 204 patients who were admitted to a hospital for addictive diseases during 40 months and who had a liver biopsy. Parenteral drug abusers (n = 34) were significantly younger than alcohol abusers (n = 23) or abusers of both (n = 147) and had lower levels of serum alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, and aspartate aminotransferase than the other two groups. Chronic active hepatitis and chronic persistent hepatitis were more frequent (p less than 0.001) in abusers of parenteral drugs alone, whereas cirrhosis was found most often (p less than 0.001) in abusers of both alcohol and parenteral drugs. Cirrhosis was present in 10 of 39 (26%) simultaneous abusers of alcohol and parenteral drugs compared with 58 of 96 (60%) alcohol-abusing former parenteral drug abusers (p less than 0.001). Methadone maintenance treatment was not associated with cirrhosis. Thus, methadone-maintained patients who abuse alcohol and develop cirrhosis should remain in methadone maintenance treatment and receive concomitant alcoholism treatment. Also, these data further support the hypothesis that abusers of both alcohol and parenteral drugs have an increased risk of developing cirrhosis.