European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

PREVALENCE OF ALCOHOLIC LIVER DISEASE AMONG FEMALES RESIDENT IN PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE

Adekemi Kiyesi*, Michael Ikechukwu Ogamba, Ijeoma Meka and Kolawole Olusegun Alabi

ABSTRACT

Introduction: This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of alcoholic liver disease in Port Harcourt. Methodology: It was conducted in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, among patients that presented at the Out-Patient Department. A total of 160 females participated in the study, employing a purposive, cross-sectional approach and a structured questionnaire, and four research objectives and questions. Results: The respondents were mainly aged between 31-45 years, 101(63.13%), mostly married, 96(60.0%) and singles, 61(38.12%). Knowledge of liver disease shows that 138(88.1%) have heard about it, 115(84.1%) heard from health facility and 11(8.7%) from school. Also, 26(18.8%) respondents knew how it is treated, with 14(53.9%) and 8(30.8%) knowing that it can be treated in the hospital and traditionally respectively, it was mostly managed in the hospital, 12(63.2%) and traditionally, 6(31.6%), and 138(88.1%) know the causes, while 102(77.9%) knew the causes as infections, while 4(2.9%) knew that alcoholic liver disease can be caused by certain foods. The observations of this study agree and disagree with other studies in certain aspects. The prevalence of liver disease was 149(93.1%) normal values of aspartate, with 5(3.1%) having low values, 157(99.1%) had normal values for alanine amino transaminase, normal circulating gamma GT was 156(98.7%), while the circulating total protein was normal for 131(81.9%) respondents, followed by 23(22.3%) that was high and similar for creatinine, normal was most frequent, 151(94.3%) and high circulation values was the least, 3(1.9%). Finally, the relationship between gender and age to the liver disease markers revealed age (0.793) and sex (0.591) were not statistically significant for the aspartate, age (0.000) was significant and sex (0.217) non-significant for ALT, and age (0.830) and sex (1.52) not statistically significant for gamma T, while both age (0.993) and sex (0.777) are statistically not significant for ALP, and is similar for total protein (age; 0.793 and sex; 0.639), but age (0.000) is statistically significant for creatinine, but not for sex (0.997). Conclusion: The study observed high knowledge of alcoholic liver disease among participants in the study, with most biomarkers for liver diseases being non-statistically significant in relation to age and gender, but for aspartate and total protein which strongly correlated with the age of the respondents. However, the prevalence of liver disease is low (8.1%) of the population and this may be attributed to factors such as poor healthcare-seeking attitude among the residents and effective diagnostic tools to detect the anomaly in the liver, especially, at the earliest stages of the disease condition.

Keywords: knowledge, prevalence, liver disease, enzymes, biomarkers.