SCIENTISTS LINK RISING UK ALCOHOL DEATHS TO HEROIN

LONDON (Reuters) - An epidemic of heroin use in Britain during the 1970s
and 1980s appears to be resulting in a huge increase in the number of men
dying from alcoholic liver disease, scientists said on Thursday.

Researchers at Imperial College and St. Mary's Hospital, London, said
deaths from alcohol liver damage, where the precise cause was unspecified,
shot up 259 per cent in middle-aged men in England between 1993 and 1999.

They said such a huge rise could not be explained by increased alcohol
consumption alone and suggested that exposure to the liver-damaging virus
hepatitis C through drug users sharing infected needles was also to blame.

"Hepatitis C normally takes 20 or 30 years to lead to liver damage and so
does alcohol but if you are hepatitis C-positive and you also drink alcohol
it races away," said Professor John Henry, of the academic department of
accident and emergency medicine at St. Mary's.

"That is what we think is happening. It is a sort of reaping effect," he
told Reuters.

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Pathology, the team said anyone infected
with hepatitis C who also drank alcohol was 31 times more likely to suffer
from liver cirrhosis.

They said that a generation of men, now aged 40 to 59 years old, could have
been involved in an "epidemic of illicit drug use" which took hold in
Britain in the 1970s and 1980s

"Significantly, this was before the introduction of needle exchange and
other interventions to reduce the risk of HIV ( news - web sites)
transmission in drug users."

The report said hepatitis C infection -- which had not even been recognized
at the time -- was now a worldwide health issue. In Britain alone, an
estimated 300,000 people were infected though fewer than five percent had
been diagnosed.

The pathology of alcoholic liver disease and chronic hepatitis C were very
similar. Clinicians and pathologists could fail to recognize hepatitis C
infection as a cause of rapid progression of alcoholic liver disease unless
they specifically tested for the virus.

The scientists recommended more hepatitis C testing so that those found to
be infected could be advised to cut down on their drinking and increase
their chances of successful treatment and longer survival.