May 29, 2009 -- Low-level exposures to environmental toxins may partially explain the increasing problem of liver disease in U.S. adults, says a Kentucky researcher.

"Liver disease is a rapidly growing problem for the U.S. population," says Matthew Cave, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, who is scheduled to present his study June 1 at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in Chicago. As obesity has increased, so has liver disease.

More than one in three U.S. adults has liver disease, Cave found in his study. That's after excluding people with traditional risk factors for liver disease, such as hepatitis and alcoholism. He bases the one in three figure on the percentage of people he evaluated that had abnormal levels of a liver enzyme associated with liver injury.

Some of these cases, he says, are linked with environmental pollutants, such as pesticides and heavy metals.