Recreational Drugs: a New Health Hazard for Patients with Concomitant Chronic Liver Diseases

Abstract

Our purpose in this article is to review the effects of recreational drugs, used either on their own but principally combined with alcohol consumption, in determining hepatic injury or influencing the evolution of some chronic diseases of the liver, specifically HCV infection and NAFLD. A deleterious role of daily use of recreational drugs, in particularly cannabis, has been shown to demonstrate clearly a rapid progression of fibrosis and steatosis, leading to a major severity in patients with chronic hepatitis C. On the other hand, the effects of the misuse of these substances on NAFLD, the main obesity-related comorbidity, leading to addiction, is still to be elucidated even though some clues to the recreational drugs hepatotoxicity  are  already present in the literature. This short review aims at raising awareness about this topic.