Phytoestrogens and Liver

Genistein is a phytoestrogen with similarities to female sex hormones and, has been shown to prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver injury in animal studies but human studies are lacking.

In this study, authors, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010 and examined the relationship between normalized urinary genistein (nUG) and serum ALT using linear regression models. Investigators further examined the differential effect of sex using an interaction term.

In almost 10K patients, authors found a statistically significant association between genistein and liver function in males, but not in females. At least for me, the sex-specific role of genistein in mitigating liver disease is very interesting.