Does co-consumption of Western diet and binge drinking result in more progressive liver disease?

Now the leading liver disease worldwide, metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is a public health crisis. A major concern with MASLD is progression to the more severe metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH), which significantly increases morbidity and mortality. It is thought for transition to MASH, multiple hepatic injuries must occur. Lifestyle factors are major drivers of liver diseases and multiple harmful lifestyle factors often co-exist. One such common combination is high consumption of the high-fat, high-sugar, low-fiber, ultra-processed Western diet paired with the most common form of immoderate alcohol consumption, binge drinking. Although these two lifestyle factors often accompany each other, little is known about how their co-consumption impacts liver disease progression. As such, we conducted multiple experiments on Western diet and binge drinking with the hypothesis their co-consumption would progress liver disease more than either treatment alone. We randomly divided mice (n=9-15/sex/group) into 4 groups: 1) Control, 2) Control/Binge, 3) Western, or 4) Western/Binge, where mice either co-consumed diet and binge drinking for 12 weeks or consumed diet for 6 weeks and then co-consumed diet and binge drinking for an additional 14 weeks for a total of 20 weeks. Following 12 weeks, Western diet increased key measures associated with MASLD, such as hepatic triglycerides and lipid peroxidation, regardless of binge drinking. However, male Western/Binge mice had increased microvesicular steatosis and hepatic CD68, indicating the combination may be worse than either alone. Early measures from the 20-week cohort show Western/Binge mice to have significantly increased liver transaminases compared to their controls indicating potential advanced liver damage. More results on molecular mechanisms of disease are forthcoming. We expect to see the 20-week Western/Binge mice to have marked increases in liver damage with progression to MASH. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.