SAN ANTONIO \u2013 People across the country, especially in San Antonio, are dying from a disease they don\u2019t know they have until it\u2019s too late. <\/p>\n
It all starts with diabetes and obesity and evolves from there. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne half of San Antonio is either pre-diabetic or diabetic, and then you have the obesity. It\u2019s almost endemic,\u201d said Dr. Sherwyn Schwartz, the longtime senior endocrinologist for the Evolution Research Group. <\/p>\n
KSAT has done several stories<\/a> about Schwartz\u2019s research<\/a> that found a large percentage of those patients end up with fat around their liver.<\/p>\n That can progress to a liver disease called NASH, which stands for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.<\/p>\n Its symptoms are usually silent. Once leg swelling, belly boating and yellow eyes show up, the disease is severe \u2014 20% to 30% of people with NASH end up with scarring on their liver, called cirrhosis, which can be deadly. <\/p>\n \u201cIt can shorten your lifespan by 10 to 20 years and increase the risk of liver cancer by 17 times,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n Schwartz said the point is to catch NASH before it turns into cirrhosis. He said if caught early enough, there are treatments to keep the disease from developing. <\/p>\n \u201cThe only way to make a diagnosis of fatty liver to NASH is a liver biopsy. That\u2019s a puncture. It\u2019s invasive and it\u2019s expensive,\u201d Schwartz said. <\/p>\n Schwartz and Dr. Greg Gonzaba are both longtime experts on this in San Antonio. They are one of just four teams chosen by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to find out an easier way to diagnose NASH.<\/p>\n The research is being run out of Gonzaba\u2019s primary care clinic in San Antonio. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m honored and humbled to be part of this national project that can help millions of Americans,\u201d Gonzaba said. <\/p>\n The subject is personal to Gonzaba, who lost a close friend and many others to NASH.<\/p>\n \u201cMy friend from medical school, a 53-year-old physician in Austin, a medical director for Seaton and he passed away from fatty liver disease,\u201d Gonzaba said. <\/p>\n Now, he\u2019s determined to make change. <\/p>\n Gonzaba and his team are doing scans and blood tests as part of this research, trying to find a biomarker or indicator that someone has NASH and to what degree. <\/p>\n \u201cTo make an analogy, an A1C is a test that screens and or we use to track diabetes. If we could find something very non-invasive and simple like that for NASH, that would be ideal,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n They\u2019re hoping at least 200 people in San Antonio will sign up to be a part of their study.<\/p>\n Anyone who is diabetic and overweight may qualify for the study, meaning they could get their own health checked and help keep their community healthy in the future. <\/p>\n To see if you qualify, call 210-319-4883. <\/p>\n Beyond the study, Gonzaba encourages people to get to the doctor for regular checkups, and request liver scans if they are at risk for fatty liver. <\/p>\n He also encourages people to get some exercise and eat healthy to avoid any diabetes or liver disease progression. <\/p>\n Related stories on KSAT:<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 People across the country, especially in San Antonio, are dying from a disease they don\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[132052,132053,584,132051,858,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-373238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-fatty-liver-disease","tag-gonzaba-clinic","tag-health","tag-liver-disease","tag-research","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}