Liver health should be as important to everyone as heart health. Just as with the heart, you only have one liver. Everything you eat passes through your liver on its way from the digestive tract to the rest of the body. However, while we know how to live a “heart-healthy life,” most people know nothing about how to ensure a healthy liver. Welcome to the Liver Line, a community and online publication on liver health and liver disease. Liver Line is a central gathering place for patients, medical professionals and researchers to learn about the latest research in liver health and the treatment of diseases such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), liver fibrosis, and cirrhosis. Liver Line will also discuss how the mechanisms behind liver disease are connected to other diseases. The liver is different than many other organs There are characteristics of the liver that make it different than other organs. For example, while the liver does many important things for the body, it’s hard to measure its functions. You can easily assess the function of the heart by measuring the heart rate and blood pressure, or the lungs by measuring the breathing rate, the oxygenation of the blood and asking the patient whether they are having shortness of breath. For the liver, it’s not easy to determine how it’s functioning from either physical exams or talking to the patient. We have only one liver, and it’s so important that it has a tremendous reserve capacity. You can knock out a high percentage of the liver and it still functions effectively to keep people alive. It’s a very resilient organ, and, for that reason, diseases can affect the liver for a long time before the liver function starts to fail. That’s one of the reasons why NASH patients can have inflammation in their liver and progressing fibrosis for decades with no or minimal symptoms and no adverse effects until the late stages of disease. Seemingly suddenly, they have cirrhosis. Liver diseases such as fatty liver disease, NASH, and cirrhosis are often called a “hidden epidemic.” By some estimates, up to a quarter of the people in world are affected by fatty liver disease, with a lifetime risk of some 20 million people dying as a result. Yet, few people talk about liver health and there are no approved therapies for NASH fibrosis or NASH cirrhosis. Liver Line looks to make these issues and this research more visible. Liver Line is sponsored by Galectin Therapeutics The Liver Line is sponsored by Galectin Therapeutics, the leading developer of therapeutics that target galectin proteins. Clinical trials are currently underway, exploring promising carbohydrate-based therapies for the treatment of fibrotic liver disease and cancer. Visit Galectin Therapeutics for more information.