RIP, Michele Trachtenberg: Some Stats on Liver Disease Mortality
Liver-related causes have taken off since 2020.
I have added some emphasis in the articles below.
ABC News: 'Buffy' and 'Gossip Girl' actress Michelle Trachtenberg dead at 39
Michelle Trachtenberg, an actress best known for her roles in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Gossip Girl," has died at age 39.
Trachtenberg was found dead Wednesday in her New York City apartment near Columbus Circle just after 8 a.m. local time by her mother, police sources told ABC News.
The sources told ABC News the actress recently underwent a liver transplant and may have been experiencing complications. Trachtenberg is believed to have died of natural causes and no foul play is suspected.
An autopsy will be conducted by the medical examiner's office to determine the cause and manner of death.
NY Post: Michelle Trachtenberg received a liver transplant shortly before her death at 39: sources
The Post broke the news on Wednesday, Feb. 26. Trachtenberg’s rep, Gary Mantoosh, told The Post, “It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle Trachtenberg has passed away. The family requests privacy for their loss. There are no further details at this time.”
According to sources, the “Gossip Girl” star underwent a liver transplant shortly before her death.
Her cause of death has not been made clear, but insiders said it’s not being investigated as suspicious.
….
Before her death, the actress sparked health concerns when her Instagram followers noticed her troubling appearance.
….
That month, she posted a selfie. “Snake it to make it,” she wrote in the caption.
“Concerned for yellow in your eyes but other than that you are a QUEEN and you’re a wonderful human being who deserves love and joy,” one commenter wrote.
Yellow eyes can be a symptom of liver problems.
All sorts of things can cause liver problems. Yes, drug use can cause problems, but so can hepatitis and other diseases.
But, more to the point, there has been an extraordinary increase in liver-related deaths in the U.S. since 2020.
Let’s take a look.
High-Level Liver Disease Death Rate Trend, 1999-2024
Here is the age-adjusted death rate, 1999-2024 (the 2024 rate is provisional).
Yes, the age-adjusted death rate from chronic liver disease increased 28% from 2006 to 2019 and also increased 28% from 2019 to 2021.
Ranked Cause of Death, Liver Disease Highlighted, 2023, for Females
From this post:
I’ve circled the liver disease deaths in the ranking table for females for 2023 for young-ish adults.
Liver disease is not a top cause of death overall, but it ranks for younger women.
It used not to rank so high. It’s been climbing.
Here is the ranking table for males.
Yes, males have more liver disease deaths. Males tend to have more deaths from everything, except at the oldest ages… because there aren’t so many of them.
Breakout by Liver Disease Detail: Is it the Alcohol? Or is it the COVID?
Let me be clear about what is covered in these causes of death. The “Liver Disease” is coming from the “113 Rankable Causes of Death” from the CDC and is defined:
#Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (K70,K73-K74)
These are the ICD-10 codes:
This is a bit of mixing of alcohol abuse (K70) with other causes of liver disease. All three are intended to capture long-term liver disease, as opposed to acute liver disease (as with a toxic effect from a drug in a very short period).
There are codes for acute liver damage — that’s not what is covered here.
So let’s see what supposedly was increasing. Is it the alcoholic liver disease? Or one of the others?
It turns out K73 has minimal number of deaths, so let’s focus on K70 and K74.
It looks like alcoholic liver disease deaths have been driving the overall trend — but how does that spike so rapidly? For what is supposed to be a chronic disease?
Notice: the trend for alcoholic liver disease as a cause for death had been increasing since 2006. There was also a slight increase in the non-alcoholic chronic liver disease as a cause of death in 2020 and 2021.
Perhaps something in COVID combined with already-damaged livers leading to fatality. In the case of alcoholic liver disease, where the population already showed a bad trend, COVID may have accelerated that trend. In the case of non-alcoholic liver disease, where the trend was ambiguous, the effect was less.
For those who would want to argue vaccine effects, the largest increase was in 2020, not 2021.
To be sure, many people were drinking heavily in 2020. That may have been enough to push some over the edge.
Enter Rumor, Painted Full of Tongues
All of this may be wide of the mark for Michele Trachtenberg, to be sure. We don’t even know if she actually had a liver transplant. And if she did, we don’t know why.
This has been a bad flu year, and those who have had organ transplants often are on immune-system-suppressing drugs. People do die suddenly due to the flu. Even those who are 39.
I can think of all sorts of possibilities.
It’s not our business to know the cause of death of a specific individual, in general, even if they had been a celebrity at one point.
It’s not about her particular case, but that there may be a connection to a cause of death with an increasing rate of late… one that has been flummoxing me, and that I haven’t seen getting much attention.
It’s been creeping up in my ranking tables, especially for younger people, and I’ve been wondering: what the heck?!
Yes, alcohol does damage livers.
But that rapidly? How much alcohol does that take?
What’s been going on here?
Liver disease: My GP used to tut-tut that I was at risk of Fatty Liver Disease, but thanks to GLP-1, I'm no longer at risk. But Fatty Liver Disease doesn't show up in the codes? Should younger people get their blood tested for this?
Also: Stats on mortality causes for people in their 40s was timely, as a woman in my family, age 47, recently died of a heart attack. Total shock. Your chart has it listed as the #2 cause of death. I've read articles about the bad old days when women with chest pains were told by the doc to take a Valium. Now the word needs to go out about (1) getting tested for heart disease, and (2) calling an ambulance when chest pains occur because the EMTs have oxygen, etc, at hand. [As in, do NOT drive to the ER, bad idea!]
I'll have to remember to dig out causes of death for 2020 vs other years. I'm stunned that ANY natural cause of death besides COVID went up in 2020. After all, if a person died of any kind of natural cause but also tested positive for COVID (often with the PCR cycles set rather high), it would be counted as a COVID death. The hospitals got an extra payment that way.
For now, I'm finishing up a substack on the Secret Service.