Chronic alcohol consumption is a leading cause of chronic
liver disease worldwide, leading to
cirrhosis and
hepatocellular carcinoma. Currently, the most widely used model for alcoholic liver injury is ad libitum feeding with the Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet containing
ethanol for 4-6 weeks; however, this model, without the addition of a secondary insult, only induces mild steatosis, slight elevation of serum
alanine transaminase (ALT) and little or no
inflammation. Here we describe a simple mouse model of alcoholic liver injury by chronic
ethanol feeding (10-d ad libitum oral feeding with the Lieber-DeCarli
ethanol liquid diet) plus a single binge
ethanol feeding. This protocol for chronic-plus-single-binge
ethanol feeding synergistically induces liver injury,
inflammation and
fatty liver, which mimics acute-on-chronic alcoholic liver injury in patients. This feeding protocol can also be extended to chronic feeding for longer periods of time up to 8 weeks plus single or multiple binges. Chronic-binge
ethanol feeding leads to high blood alcohol levels; thus, this simple model will be very useful for the study of
alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and of other organs damaged by alcohol consumption.