M Morales‐Ruiz, W Jimenez, D Perez‐Sala, J Ros, A Leivas, S Lamas, F Rivera, V Arroyo – 1 December 1996 – Arterial vasodilatation is thought to play a major role in the pathogenesis of systemic hemodynamics and renal disturbances occurring in cirrhotic patients. Recent investigations suggest that an increased vascular nitric oxide (NO) production could be implicated in this abnormality. The current study assessed whether increased expression of inducible and/or endothelial nitric oxide synthase (iNOS and eNOS, respectively) occurs in arterial vessels of cirrhotic rats.

M Rumi, E Del Ninno, M L Parravicini, R Romeo, R Soffredini, M F Donato, J Wilber, A Russo, M Colombo – 1 December 1996 – To compare the long‐term effectiveness and tolerability of lymphoblastoid interferon (IFN‐αN1) and recombinant interferon alfa 2a (IFN‐α2a) in patients with chronic hepatitis caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV), 234 consecutive patients with HCV‐related chronic hepatitis were randomized prospectively to receive titrated doses (starting dose = 6 million units [MU]) of IFN‐α2a (n = 118) or IFN‐αN1 (n = 116) for 12 months.

A Mason, R Sallie, R Perrillo, A Rayner, L Xu, D E Dohner, M Dehner, N Naoumov, L Gelb, B Saha, J O'Grady, R Williams – 1 December 1996 – Members of the herpes virus family and hepatitis B virus (HBV) have been implicated as etiologic agents in non‐A, non‐B (NANB) fulminant hepatic failure (FHF), but the frequency of infection with these agents has not been established using appropriate controls. To examine this issue, we studied 50 NANB FHF patients and 104 liver transplant recipients from North America and Europe.

T Fukumoto, T Berg, Y Ku, W O Bechstein, M Knoop, H Lemmens, H Lobeck, U Hopf, P Neuhaus – 1 December 1996 – The pathogenesis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is likely to be associated with viral replication in vivo, but little is known concerning the dynamics of HCV turnover. We performed serial measurements of serum HCV‐RNA levels following orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) in nine patients with HCV‐positive cirrhosis. Serum HCV‐RNA levels were determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction before, immediately after, and for up to 1 month after OLT.

T J Liang – 1 December 1996

T Osada, M Sakamoto, Y Ino, A Iwamatsu, Y Matsuno, T Muto, S Hirohashi – 1 December 1996 – In human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the liver is the major target organ of metastasis, which is known as intrahepatic metastasis. To analyze the mechanism of this metastasis, we established two sublines from the human HCC cell line Li7. Subline Li7HM produced multiple liver metastasis, whereas subline Li7NM never did so after intrasplenic injection into nude mice.

K Taniguchi, T Nonami, A Nakao, A Harada, T Kurokawa, S Sugiyama, N Fujitsuka, Y Shimomura, S M Hutson, R A Harris, H Takagi – 1 December 1996 – The activities of key enzymes in the valine catabolic pathway–branched‐chain aminotransferase, branched‐chain alpha‐keto acid dehydrogenase complex, methacrylyl (MC)‐coenzyme A (CoA) hydratase (crotonase), and 3‐ hydroxyisobutyryl‐CoA (HIB‐CoA) hydrolase–were measured in normal and cirrhotic human livers.

T Aiyama, K Yoshioka, A Okumura, M Takayanagi, K Iwata, T Ishikawa, S Kakumu – 1 December 1996 – Essential mixed cryoglobulinemia is frequently associated with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, with the formation of HCV antigen/antibody complexes. The hypervariable region (HVR) of the HCV E2/NS1 region is thought to include epitopes for neutralizing antibodies, but it remains uncertain whether cryoglobulins (CGs) contain such antibody‐bound HCV.

T Aihara, S Noguchi, Y Sasaki, S Imaoka – 1 December 1996

J H Teckman, D Qu, D H Perlmutter – 1 December 1996