Glutathione for Liver Health
There is not enough good evidence to show that oral glutathione protects or improves general liver health. The only positive findings come from small, uncontrolled studies, while the single well-designed trial found no benefit.
Why this grade7-layer evidence engine
The favorable signals are all uncontrolled. A 2017 open-label, single-arm pilot in 34 people with fatty liver (PMID 28789631) and a 2025 literature review pooling 3 studies in 109 people (PMID 40149620) reported lower ALT on roughly 300 mg/day, but neither used a comparison group, so the improvement cannot be separated from concurrent diet and lifestyle changes or the natural course of the disease. Both sets of authors explicitly called for large randomized trials before any clinical recommendation.
The one rigorous test was negative. A 2020 double-blind randomized controlled trial in 61 cirrhosis patients (PMID 32635181) found that oral glutathione 500 mg/day had no significant effect on oxidative stress or antioxidant capacity over 12 weeks. Conventional oral glutathione is also a peptide that is largely broken down in the gut, which undercuts the rationale for raising liver glutathione by mouth.
Regulators and clinics offer no support for this use. The FDA has never approved glutathione for these purposes and has warned against injectable compounding, and UK authorities classify unlicensed IV glutathione as dangerous; major centers (Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Harvard, NIH ODS) and liver societies do not endorse it. Note that intravenous N-acetylcysteine, the glutathione precursor, does help in acute liver failure (PMID 35371352), but that is a different drug and route and should not be read as evidence for oral glutathione supplements.
Scoring transparency
All scores computed by a 7-layer evidence engine — fully auditable▸View the full decision path (audit trail)
- compute_raw_score — 加權公式: L2×0.30 + L3×0.25 + L5×0.25 + L11×0.10 + L1×0.10 = 0.455
- tier_from_score — 依分數區間映射至 tier letter
- apply_hec_rules — 高品質 SR/MA 顯示 positive (1 篇 > 0 negative)
- tier_strict_requirement_check — | C→U 因 scope.conflation_risk=true 且 L11 獨評較低 (B7-2 tier cap)
- detect_disputes — 偵測到 0 個 hard + 0 個 soft dispute
- decide_status — 依 tier + dispute 結果決定 status