Liver disease is a disease that’s stigmatized. Many people are embarrassed to say they have liver disease, and that’s because liver disease is associated with alcoholism or drug abuse. But most people have liver disease that’s not related to those issues at all. People who smoke cigarettes get bad diseases, and we try not to stigmatize them. So it’s very difficult to be a patient with liver disease. They often feel isolated. But what has struck me about all of my patients is that they are very supportive of each other, and their families tend to be very supportive of them. They weather their condition with great grace, and they’re very grateful for the help we can provide. One of the things that distinguishes the gastroenterology division at Duke is that we have a very balanced faculty. Many programs specialize in one thing or another. Duke really covers the spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases. We have the breadth of general gastroenterologists, but we also have the sub-subspecialties.
I have devoted my career to studying how to improve recovery from liver injury. This is important for patients with all types of liver disease, because the two main causes of death from liver disease, cirrhosis and liver cancer, can develop when repair of liver damage is defective. My basic research laboratory showed that certain inflammatory factors help the liver to regenerate. In addition, we discovered that processes that form the liver during fetal development become reactivated in injured adult livers and help them to regenerate. These discoveries are leading to novel ways to diagnose and treat patients with liver disease so that cirrhosis and liver cancer can be prevented. I lead a team of scientists and doctors who are extending this work to patients. We have active clinical research programs in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, sclerosing cholangitis and cirrhosis. In addition, I take care of patients with all kinds of liver disease.
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