Since the liver is the primary organ for metabolism, then in the setting of liver injury there will be reduced metabolism of compounds such as hormones. If these hormones are not metabolized and degraded in the liver, then these hormone levels will increase.
<em>A particular example is that the hormone estrogen is increased in the setting of liver damage, causing males with liver failure to have feminine characteristics.</em>
<span>The levels of such hormones in blood would be expected to increase. One of the roles of liver is enyzmatic degradation of hormones. Hormones are chemical messengers that carry information to the target cells through the blood stream. One of the elimination mechanism of these hormones is through enzymatic degradation in the liver. If the process of degradation is impaired it means that the hormones levels in the system will increase as the mechanism of elimination is not functional.</span>
