Original Source: usnews.com

MONDAY, Feb. 14, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a big jump in hospitalizations for life-threatening alcoholic hepatitis at a Detroit health system, new research shows.

Alcoholic hepatitis is a liver disease caused by heavy drinking, and these findings add to mounting evidence that many Americans turned to alcohol in an attempt to deal with pandemic stress. U.S. alcohol sales rose 54% in the pandemic's first week alone.

"This is an eye opener for how much the increase in alcohol use has affected us as a community," said lead author Dr. Humberto Gonzalez, a transplant hepatologist with the Henry Ford Health System.

For the new study, his team compared alcoholic hepatitis admissions to the Henry Ford Health System between May and September 2020, and the same months in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

In those five months of 2020, 93 patients were...click here to continue reading

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