I got a call from my doctor - who was testing my liver function. I tested for slightly high cholesterol (1 point over) and high AST levels - 100 (normal is 34).
Now you are not my doctor, and I am not asking for medical advice - I have a doctor for that and I will be calling him tomorrow, but here’s the thing I (naturally) looked up what could be causing this and everything from cirrhosis to hepatitis came up.
Now of course I am freaking out - although I keep telling myself to be calm.
So, Dopers - give me some benign reasons that my tests may be showing this…
Those numbers were high for me when I had my gallbladder flareup. There were signs I was getting jaundiced as a result of the gallbladder blockage (not eyes / skin, but urine… and my hands/feet ITCHED). It got better after a couple of days. Been having any tummy grumbles lately?
It’s not exactly benign, but my father had elevated liver enzymes and worried that he had liver cancer. He actually has a mitochondrial myopathy. All I know about it is that it leeches vitamin B out of his system, so he takes a vitamin B supplement and gets it monitored regularly.
It’s hard to say how the disease will progress in individual cases, but it seems that it’s much milder as an adult-onset disease. Basically my father gets tired easier than he used to, but he’s just careful about his physical activity and gets everything monitored a few times a year to make sure all is still well.
Years ago, my mother got similar results. Please note that the only way to get a word in sideways with her is to interrupt.
“… and it’s not like I’ve been taking any special medication, unless you count the syrup, so of course”
“The syrup? What syrup?”
“Well, cough syrup, I had a cold, but that can’t be it, it’s just”
“Mom, are we talking about that syrup whose name ends in -ol like alcohol and which can’t be given to children under 12 in any dosages? Were you taking it when the blood was extracted? I’m hereby betting you it has at least 10% ethanol, do you still have the bottle around to check it?”
“Well, I’d finished taking it the day before, and give me a minute”
…
“It says here ‘excipient 70% ethanol’!”
“Mom, you’d been having three spoonfuls of vodka a day for a week right before the extraction. Call the doctor and let him know we found the problem.”
That syrup has now been modified, the current formulation has 3% ethanol.
Some common painkillers and other OTC medications “negatively affect liver function:” the first thing to show up is high ASTs, but the levels go back to normal once you stop taking the medication.
this happened to me. except i think my ast levels may have been slightly higher…i have the paper work somewhere… anyway all my scary tests came back negative, my levels were monitored weekly until they went back to normal and that was that. turns out it happens to my mom too, every now and then.
Oh crap that reminds me, my doctor wanted me to get another sonogram on my liver. I have elevated liver enzymes too and she thinks I have a holey liver or something.
I also had higher than normal enzyme levels and the end result was another doctor telling me I am fat. Well he did not say I was fat, he said my liver was fat or “fatty” to use medical terms. He told me to relax and try to lose a few pounds. The “relax” part was a huge relief. I hope you get the same or better news.
I had slightly elevated liver enzymes and my doctor didn’t even follow it up with more tests. It turned out later to be a moderate gallbladder issue that did get completely worked up, but seems to have gone away and hasn’t yet required surgery.
This is not a good time to be named poysyn, as almost anything elevates your liver enzymes.
As a rule of thumb, liver enzyme elevation is common, and the level you report is a small (but not totally insignificant) elevation. (Really serious acute disease would give you a number in the thousands…)
First typical clinical response will be to take a history and make sure you aren’t taking something harmful, such as some sort of weirdo herb potion, pill, likker, etc.
Next step is often “Let’s repeat those in a couple weeks; sooner if you are feeling worse.” If it goes away, who cares what it was. By the time we are 50 (not you, obviously), probably half of us have had Hepatitis A, for example, usually without ever knowing it. Ditto w/ mono and CMV, which also elevate liver enzymes.
Look; you could be about to croak. You could have some sort of chronic active hepatitis, or liver/biliary/pancreatic cancer, or flukes, or…well; you already get the idea.
But probably not. Probably just another boring laboratory abnormality that goes away on its own with no good explanation. Another House candidate story foiled by turnng out to be totally mundane.
Way cooler than some crummy elevated enzymes. I had a patient once whose presenting L shoulder pain turned out to be from subdiaphragmatic irritation from a leaking splenic peliosis. I made grand rounds with that case as an intern. Got the diagnosis right and it was my first exposure to the condition.
Why don’t you guys give me more of these kinds of diagnostic dilemmas instead of elevated enzymes?
Some years ago Mrs. J. had some routine lab work done and the results came back showing a marked elevation in multiple liver function tests. Immediately we started worrying that something was seriously wrong (my fear was that she had hepatitis C contracted from me via some unknown exposure related to my being an M.D., and that we were both doomed to a life of gradually creeping liver failure).
She got retested and the results were completely normal. It appears there had been some type of lab mixup/error.
Whew.
Also, I’ve seen liver biopsies as part of workups of unexplained elevated liver enzymes many many times turn out to be normal, or show minimal nonspecific abnormalities such as many people have (like a slightly fatty liver).
Oodles of things, including infections, everyday prescriptions, herbal remedies and (seemingly) phases of the moon can temporarily boost liver function tests.
