These 2 Alcohol-Related Diseases Are on the Rise, Says New Study

The general belief used to be that it was older individuals who tended to suffer the greatest harm to major organs from years of regular drinking. But as fatty liver disease rates have been increasing—“disproportionally” among young adults, Canadian researchers observed—their team of doctors and scientists at Queen’s University in Ontario analyzed nearly two decades of data to further investigate “end-organ complications” from alcohol in adolescents and young adults.

Their February 2025 study, published in the Gastroenterology and Hepatology publication of the American Medical Association journal, used healthcare data taken from 2003 and 2021. The ages for the adolescents and young adults the data came from ranged from 13 to 39 years old, and they were either seen in emergency departments or an inpatient setting for “end-organ alcohol-related harm.”

The patient encounters were split into the main categories by organ:

• pancreas (alcohol-associated acute and chronic pancreatitis)
• liver (alcohol-associated liver disease, alcohol-associated hepatitis, alcohol-associated cirrhosis)
• other organs (stomach, adrenal glands, nervous system, muscles, heart, and fetus when applicable)

The results: Of the 11,508 adolescents and young adults included in the data, pancreas-related issues were reported in 29%, while liver-related complications represented 19%. The researchers also noted that those with pancreas-related complications specifically shared some common themes:

• 71% likely to be male
• 88% likely to live in an urban area
• 77% likely to need hospitalization.

But the study also showed a jump in alcohol-related complications affecting young women. Pancreatitis increased by 7% per year among the male group, and the while increasing 12% for women. Meanwhile, liver-related complications rose by 6% per year in the men and 9% for the women.

The researchers remarked that their findings show “gastrointestinal complications from alcohol” increasing in adolescents and young adults “at rates much higher than in other organ systems.” Pancreatitis and alcohol-associated liver disease affected more men, but the team also remarked that young women experienced higher rate changes in the two diseases.

Similar to alcohol-associated liver disease, “males and females may have a different risk of acute and chronic pancreatitis for the same level of alcohol exposure,” the study noted. The team also emphasized that they “did not observe these changes in other end organs, such as the stomach and heart.”

The researchers concluded that more research is “urgently needed” on the topic.

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