Eating late at night linked to up to 30% higher risk of liver disease — SkimNews
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- OHSU researchers analyzed data from nearly 200,000 participants across three major nationwide cohorts — the Nurses' Health Study, the Nurses' Health Study II, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study — and found that regularly eating after dinner or around bedtime was linked to a 20% to 30% higher risk of liver disease.
- Lead author Robert Wilechansky, M.D., an OHSU hepatologist who specializes in liver transplantation, called the analysis 'among the first long-term analyses to explicitly draw the connection to fatty liver disease,' including both metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and cirrhosis.
- Fatty liver disease affects as much as 30% of the U.S. population, though Wilechansky emphasized that only a small fraction of those patients develop serious forms like liver cirrhosis.
- Co-author Andrew McHill, Ph.D., an OHSU associate professor of sleep and circadian physiology, said the liver's sensitivity to circadian rhythms helps explain the link — noting prior research showing that eating during the biological sleep window can reduce the body's ability to process food efficiently and contribute to obesity and diabetes.
- The study, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, is observational and relies on self-reported eating habits, so it cannot establish that changing meal timing prevents liver disease — a limitation Wilechansky said makes more controlled research essential.
- Wilechansky is now recruiting participants for a follow-up OHSU clinical trial that will directly monitor meal timing rather than rely on self-reports, testing whether shifting food consumption earlier produces measurable liver improvements in patients with fatty liver disease.
- The research was supported by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases Foundation under award CTORA24-179910.
Why it matters: Fatty liver disease affects as much as 30% of the U.S. population and current management largely hinges on changing dietary composition. If Wilechansky's follow-up clinical trial confirms that simply closing the kitchen earlier improves liver health, patients and clinicians would gain a low-burden behavioral lever that doesn't require overhauling what people eat.
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