Genetic and Environmental Effects on Liver Diseases

The understanding of risk factors for liver diseases, including genetic and environmental factors, has expanded in the last decade. Genetic susceptibility to complex liver diseases, combined with multi-factors such as lifestyle and gut microbiome, provide us with a more complete picture of disease pathophysiology.
Liver transplantation, an inevitable treatment for end-stage liver diseases, has been on the rise over the last 20 years. The early postoperative complications, such as thrombosis and graft rejection account for the high morbidity and mortality of transplant patients. Donor genetic risk and the genetic variation mismatches between donors and recipients have been recognized as contributors to the transplantation outcomes.
The following messages could be concluded from this thesis:
1) Accomplishing the first genome-wide association study in liver transplantation highlights the importance of the genetic research in this field, as this is a worthwhile way to determine pathophysiological differences between individuals compared to the general population; 2) Investigation of multiple risk factors, including demographics, environmental, and genetic risk factors for the complex disease help us create a more complete understanding of the etiology of complex liver diseases; 3) Beyond one layer of genetic analysis, the development of “multi-omics” studies and the combination of “multi-methods” analysis in liver diseases will provide frameworks for future fundamental research and translational medicine. We indicate that the clinical implementation of rapidly developing technologies and the interpretation of the accumulating genetic data are challenging, but integrative genetic studies are enabling us to unveil pathogenesis processes in complex liver diseases.