Cryptogenic Cirrhosis

Cryptogenic cirrhosis

        Cirrhosis is a disease that destroys your liver cells, turning them from smooth, red and full of toxin - free blood into petrified, scarred and non - functional versions of themselves. That means that the liver, the body's "detoxifying factory", cannot fulfill first some of its duties and then all of them. If your liver will not produce bile, the food you ingest will not be digested. If it does not turn separate toxins from any other substance in the body, your organism could be poisoned. Therefore, it is essential for your liver to stay healthy and to be well treated if it is sick.

       Causes of cirrhosis range from genetic to alcoholic problems, all leading to some form of the disease. However, there is one variation of it that has no known or so far explained cause: cryptogenic cirrhosis. It is not an unusual happening in the medical world: every disease out there has a cryptogenic component, an unexplained aspect that baffles every medical doctor for the first few hundred tests. But, as american saying goes: "If it walks like a duck, it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck".

       There are not many people out there suffering from cryptogenic cirrhosis. Not because it does not happen, but because most of them are misdiagnosed. Be careful, this fact can kill you! If your symptoms match classical cirrhosis, if your body responds to cirrhosis treatment, then it must be cryptogenic cirrhosis.

       How big is the risk of a random person to manifest such a strange disease? Not important enough to worry yourself about it. The rate of diagnosed cryptogenic cirrhosis is 7:10000, smaller than of iatrogenic cancer or unexplained coronary attacks.

       Cryptogenic cirrhosis is an abstract disease, according to physicians. What does that mean, you wonder? It means that it has no palpable cause, nothing real and it just appears out of nowhere, installing itself fully in a matter of weeks.

       The symptoms of this form of cirrhosis are identical to those of classical cirrhosis:

• jaundice: the yellowing of some portions of your skin due to accumulation of toxins that are easily released through the epidermal layer;
• fatigue and general weakness: your body does not function normally, not being able to sort out the poisons from the useful substances and it launches them all into the bloodstream, destroying itself from within;
• weight loss and lack of muscle control: it is a natural consequence of the fatigue. Your system does not process whatever food you ingest and cannot provide room for more of it. If you do not eat, your muscle tone goes down and you start to lose control over your limbs;
• the presence of blood in your stool (turning the feces black and frazzled) and in your vomit: it is a sure sign that the linings of your stomach or the walls of the esophagus have been perforated;
• high temperature: it is normal for a cirrhosis patient to be riddled with infectious agents and to often suffer from fever attacks;
• swelling in your abdominal cavity and your joints: this is due to the accumulation of liquid that cannot be eliminated because of the lack of proper function of the liver.

Cryptogenic cirrhosis pictures

       The treatment of cryptogenic cirrhosis follows the same patterns than that of any kind of cirrhosis: it tries to stop further damage to the liver cells. Therefore, it makes use of a balanced diet and multivitamins to turn the patients' life around, making them healthier and even improving their relations with the people around them.

       In some cases, there are drugs involved, lowering the swelling level of the liver by suppressing the immune system. Also, this kind of cirrhosis is one of the few guaranteed one way trips to a liver transplant.

Cryptogenic cirrhosis causes

       While it is true that there are no certain causes of cryptogenic cirrhosis, researchers and physicians have been studying this illness for some time. They have investigated and tested almost all the patients with this type of cirrhosis that were diagnosed in an american teaching hospital. Each person was asked to fill a questionnaire which contained questions about family diseases, about alcohol or drug abuse and even about their romantic lives.

       Afterwards, they were tested for viral hepatitis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), two of the most common viral causes of cirrhosis. The surprising result was that, according to these medical doctors, NASH is almost always present in the patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis. Also, almost all of these persons where obese. Could these be the causes of this mysterious illness? The jury is still out on that one, but expect it to return soon with an answer.