Protein & Cirrhosis of the liver

Executive summary

* This week's paper is our first from Iran. It shouldn’t have got through peer review, but it provided some interesting learnings.

* It was a population study involving just 121 people, who had had cirrhosis of the liver for at least 6 months. These patients were followed for 48 months, during which time over a third died.

* The paper aimed to review the relationship between protein intake and deaths during the study. It claimed higher total protein and higher dairy protein were associated with lower deaths while higher animal protein was associated with higher deaths. These were not genuine findings. I explain why not.

* The paper reported the incidence of dynapenia, which was a new term for me. There were further learnings here, but the review of dynapenia was also not robust.