Bugs in the system

LIVERS and alcohol do not get on well together. That is well known. But precisely how alcohol destroys the liver of someone who drinks too much has been a mystery. Though alcohol (technically, ethanol—the type of alcohol that has two carbon atoms and is produced by yeast fermentation) wreaks some damage directly, experiments suggest this is by no means the whole explanation. The serious and irreversible harm of cirrhosis seems to have another cause, hitherto unknown. Now, though, perhaps it has been unmasked. For a team of medical researchers led by Bernd Schnabl of the University of California, San Diego suggest the culprit is alcohol’s effect on the gut, and the bacteria therein.