Professor Nick Sheron's Inaugural Lecture - 'A Hitchhiker's Guide to Alcohol, the Liver and Everything' Event
- Time:
- 16:45 - 19:00
- Date:
- 17 March 2016
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre 2, South Academic Block, Southampton General Hospital
For more information regarding this event, please email Professor Nick Sheron at nick.sheron@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
Professor Nick Sheron will be presenting his inaugural lecture on Thursday 17 March 2016: 'A Hitchhiker's Guide to Alcohol, the Liver and Everything' Fifteen thousand years ago the Natufians invented agriculture and hence civilisation, probably in order to get pissed. Four thousand five hundred years ago the first ever work of literature featured a binge drinking monarch, who as a result had an unfortunate sexual encounter. Just over two thousand years ago Cleopatra invented the first alcohol tax and three hundred years ago London experienced the first ever recorded industrial alcohol epidemic of alcohol poisoning, as a result of government deregulation. Over the last 30 years deaths from alcohol-related liver disease have increased by four times and liver disease now kills more people under the age of 50 than cancer of the lung, bronchus, oesophagus, stomach, colon, rectum and pancreas combined. Decades of basic science, molecular biology and thousands of dead animals have got us precisely nowhere; there is still not a single drug proven to reduce the mortality of alcohol related liver disease. Liver disease is the second leading killer of women of working age in the UK, and yet the solutions are quite straightforward. The new diseases of the 21st century can be framed as the diseases of unhealthy behaviours, or unhealthy environments, or health inequalities, or healthy corporate profits and shareholder returns depending upon who is doing the framing... In this talk some inconvenient truths will be revealed, small particles of original research will be unearthed and an attempt will be made to answer an ultimate question about the liver, the universe and everything. Which for the record is not 42 but might just turn out to be… *Refreshments will be served from 16.45 in the Lecture theatre foyer with the lecture itself, commencing at 17.15. This will be followed by a wine and canapes reception till 19:00.
Speaker information
Professor Nick Sheron MD, FRCP,Professor Nick Sheron is Professor and Head of Clinical Hepatology within Medicine at the University of Southampton. Alcohol-related liver disease Death and liver disease in the UK have increased around ten-fold over the last thirty years and are still increasing. Alcoholic liver disease is the underlying diagnosis in around 85-90% of cases and has a major contribution to the total mortality. Alcoholic liver disease tends to present late, with a severe illness and a high mortality. Around 25% of patients die before they get the chance to modify their drinking behaviour. If we are to be successful in reducing liver mortality in the UK then it is necessary to concentrate on measures which will reduce patients developing liver disease in the first place. By in large these measures involve reducing total alcohol consumption in the population or screening and detecting alcoholic liver disease at an early stage.