Brief Answer:
Atleast 3 times elevation of liver enzyme have some clinical significance.

Detailed Answer:
Hi,
Thank you for choosing HealthcareMagic.
I am Dr Kumar a Gastroenterologist and would be addressing your query.

Have gone through your details and i appreciate your concerns.
As per your query answers are-
Normal levels of AST and ALT may slightly vary depending on the individual laboratory's reference values. Typically the range for normal AST is reported between 40-50 units per liter and ALT between 20 to 56 units per liter. Mild elevations are generally considered to be 2-3 times higher than the normal range and has no significance in clinically stable patient.

For being clinically significant the elevation of liver enzymes should be at least 3 times the normal value.You have not mentioned the unit your lab is considering so i will take your values in unit per litre.

Firstly LFTs are not specific to specific systems or disease processes, yet abnormalities may sometime indicate significant or serious disease.

As all other tests are normal apart from ALT and AST. Let me Firstly explain to you the significance of these two enzyme in refrence to all liver functions.

Elevation in level of both these proteins indicate leakage from damaged cells due to inflammation or cell death.These enzymes normally reside inside cells (in cytoplasm), so raised levels usually represent hepatocellular damage. ALT is more specific to the liver, as AST is also found in cardiac and skeletal muscle and red blood cells.Your ALT is just less then two times elevated hence it does not bear any clinical significance in a normal patient but on a serious note you mentioned that you are being investigated for extreme swelling(anasarca).

Generalised swelling in body usually has involvement on one of these three organs-
1)Heart
2)Liver
3)kidney

Frankly speaking though mildly deranged but liver and kidney is clinically normal in your case but your heart has not yet been investigated.Function of heart is to pump blood in forward direction.Due to age deranged lipids etc the walls of heart becomes week hence blood can't be pump in forward direction and it began to accumulate in in heart and start regurgitating back.Heart is connected to liver via circulatory system.This backflow sometimes causes blood to flow back to liver increasing back pressure and this backpressure can cause mild trauma and swelling of liver cells causing leakage of enzymes.


So i would suggest you to go for two baseline tests of cardiology namely-
Stress test-You would run on a tread mill and performance of your heart would be seen.
2d echocardiogram-Wall motion or any other valvular problem would be seen by technician.

Problem in these tests signifies possibility of coronary artery disease which is one of the most common cause of congestive cardiac failure causing water retention and edema.

As of now i don't feel that you liver has any problem.

Hope i answered your query well.In case you need more explainations feel free to follow up.
Follow up with reports of investigations.

Thanks.

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