title: The spectrum of the liver disease in the general population: lesson from the Dionysos Study.
abstract: Differently for what happened for the heart and the cardiovascular diseases, no data were available on the prevalence of the liver disorders in the general population. Based on these considerations we started planning a cohort study aimed to obtain data on how frequent liver disease was in the general population. Two comparable town in Northern Italy (Campogalliano, Modena, and Cormons, Gorizia) were selected on the basis of number of inhabitants, census and socio-economic background, and 6.917 were screened with an overall compliance of 70%, a percentage adequate to validate this type of study. In each patient a semi-quantitative, color-illustrated, food questionnaire including detailed questions on the use of alcoholic beverages was obtained in addition to a detailed physical examination to detect liver and the biliary diseases. Blood sample for ALT, AST, GGT, MCV and platelet count, and HBV and HCV markers were also taken.
authors.affiliation: CSF, Department BBCM, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tiribelli
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008108:Liver Diseases, Alcoholic / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D012307:Risk Factors