Alcohol and the Liver

Excerpt

To the editor: In their editorial "Significance of Alcohol-Induced Hypertriglyceridemia in Patients with Type IV Hyperlipoproteinemia" (Ann Intern Med 80:270-271, 1974), Drs. Mendelson and Mello state that sustained high alcohol intake has not produced clear evidence of cirrhosis in any experimental animal studies. This statement now needs to be amended, since Rubin and Lieber (1) have just reported cirrhosis in two baboons kept on high alcohol intake for 4 years. Three of the 13 baboons in the experiment developed the typical morphologic changes of alcoholic hepatitis after 9 to 12 months on high alcohol intake, and all the animals showed