Suggest Remedy For Elevated AST Levels

Posted on Wed, 18 Mar 2015

Question: I am working with a reproductive specialist, and had a full blood workup. They report that my AST is 43, and needs to be between 10 and 30, and my ALT is 49, and needs to be between 6 and 29. I am a 43 year old woman, about 5'7, 175 pounds. How serious is this, and how long should I expect it to take to lower my enzyme levels to the levels required by the reproductive specialist?

Answered by Dr. Panagiotis Zografakis (46 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
It depends

Detailed Answer:
Hello,

everything depends on the cause. The cause cannot be determined with the information you've provided. A not so wild guess would be fatty liver because you're overweight. More tests are needed though to exclude other causes. I suppose your don't drink alcohol...

In patients like you, I usually ask for the following tests:
- antinuclear antibodies (ANA)
- hepatitis tests (HBsAg, AntiHBs, AntiHBc IgG/IgM, Anti-HCV)
- Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) and gamma-glutamyl transferase (gGT)
- repeat measurement of the liver enzymes after a week or so
- ultrasound scan of the liver

To confirm my guess about fatty liver you would need to have:
- negative ANA
- no infectious hepatitis
- no (or very small) elevation of ALP and gGT
- no change in repeat measurements (or little change)
- increased echogenicity on the ultrasound scan without other abnormal findings

Getting better values would require loosing some weight. So it depends on how fast you can achieve that. Liver enzymes usually take a few weeks to get back to normal when the offending factor is removed.

I hope you find my answer helpful!
You can ask again for more details, if you'd like, by using your follow-up questions.

Kind Regards!

Note: For further follow up on digestive issues share your reports here and Click here.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar