India, July 5 -- India's liver epidemic and the sharp rise in Type-2 diabetes are part of a larger metabolic nexus, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Jitendra Singh said on Saturday, with fatty liver, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and insulin resistance closely interconnected and predisposing one another. Speaking at the third anniversary of the Liver & Metabolic Disease Network (InFLiMeN) at the Institute of Liver & Biliary Sciences (ILBS), the minister said these diseases were now appearing at much younger ages than before, making the challenge far more than a medical issue and calling for a mission-mode national response driven by preventive healthcare and mass public awareness.
Conditions once associated with middle-aged and elderly populations were increasingly being diagnosed among younger adults and even adolescents, he said, a shift that demanded a move from curative healthcare towards prevention, early detection and lifestyle modification. India's genetic predisposition, higher prevalence of central obesity and distinct phenotype made its population particularly vulnerable to diabetes, fatty liver and cardiovascular disease, often even at a lower Body Mass Index. The liver, despite being the body's most resilient and regenerative organ, was coming under stress from unhealthy dietary habits, poor sleep patterns, stress and environmental pollution, Singh said. He welcomed the ILBS effort to create a National Liver Biobank and stressed the need for affordable early diagnostic technologies, community-level screening tools and indigenous biomarkers.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.