May Patients with Alcohol Liver Disease Benefit from Herbal Medicines?

Alcoholism is currently listed as the third leading cause of death. Chronic alcohol consumption brings serious medical complications like gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, respiratory system disorders. Liver can be seriously damage by alcohol misuse. Alcoholic Liver Disease (ALD) is the first important warning sign of alcohol abuse. Since effective therapies for ALD are still limited, natural products in the treatment of ALD become very important. In this regard, there have been done very few clinical trials with poor results. Silymarin, glycyrrhizin, garlic show some promising results in ALD patients while the in vivo and in vitro studies with green tee, quercetin and curcumin indicate positive effect on patients with ALD.