Below are links to articles about liver disease that answer questions that perhaps you’ve been struggling to find answers for with extensive online searches–which either turned up nothing or vague, overly-broad information.
So I asked a medical doctor to give me the straight answers and wrote the following articles — which include his statements.
Body Odor
Perhaps you’ve heard or read somewhere that liver disease can cause a distinct body odor.
No, not the typical “BO” that one might detect on someone who just had a gym workout, who wears dirty clothes or who doesn’t shower often enough.
Shutterstock/ESB Professional
Can body odor be a single symptom of liver pathology?
How many people with liver problems have bad body odor
Labs
What about those blood tests for liver function?
Ever wonder about those and how telling they might be?
Shutterstock/Olena Yakobchuk
ALT and AST: Looking at the Values
Urine Output
Liver disease can change urine color due to a buildup of bilirubin, a yellow pigment produced during the breakdown of red blood cells.
When the liver is damaged, it cannot process bilirubin properly, causing it to spill into the bloodstream and be excreted in the urine.
This often results in dark brown, amber or tea-colored urine.
James Heilman, MD/CreativeCommons
How common is liver disease?
As of 2025, liver disease remains a serious and growing health concern in America.
An estimated five million adults — about 2% of the U.S. population — have some form of liver disease.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) continues to rise, driven by increasing rates of obesity, diabete, and metabolic syndrome.
In fact, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome are strongly associated with obesity.
Other common forms include alcoholic liver disease, hepatitis B and C, and cirrhosis.
