Alcohol consumption and fatty liver disease

Hamaguchi et al recently reported some interesting observations on alcohol consumption and risk of fatty liver disease from a large population. However, we feel that it might be necessary to discuss some concerns in this study. As the alcohol consumption categorization was defined by the same criteria in both men and women, which might affect their results. As another factor is soft drinks consumption. It has been proved that soft drinks, especially fructose, contributes to the development of obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. However, this confounding factor was not adjusted or discussed in this article. The third is the genetic background, for some genetic factors are related with the development of fatty liver disease, which was also not considered yet.