Josefa Ros, Wladimiro Jiménez, Santiago Lamas, Joan Clària, Vicente Arroyo, Francisca Rivera, Joan Rodés – 1 February 1995 – Indirect evidence exists implicating vascular nitric oxide in the pathogenesis of arterial vasodilation in cirrhosis. In the current study, a coincubation assay to estimate the vascular nitric oxide production was developed and the nitric oxide production by arterial segments of cirrhotic and control rats was assessed.

Carlo Sabbà, Carlo Merkel, Marco Zoli, Giovanna Ferraioli, Stefano Gaiani, David Sacerdoti, Luigi Bolondi – 1 February 1995 – The aim of this study was to assess the interobserver, interequipment, and time‐dependent variabilities of echo‐Doppler measurements of portral blood flow velocity (PBV), portal vein diameters (PVDs) and their derived parameters, portal blood flow (PBF), and congestion index (CI) in cirrhotic patients. The influence of a cooperative training program of the opeators on the reproductibility of the results was also investigated.

Siddhartha Kar, Brian I. Carr – 1 February 1995 – A large percentage of patients with advanced‐stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have a recurrence of tumor in the liver or lung after primary resection and even after orthotopic liver transplantation. One reason for this may be the presence of small numbers of tumor cells circulating in the blood before surgery or the liberation of tumor cells into circulation during surgical manipulation.

Enrico Silini, Fulvia Bono, Agostino Cividini, Antonella Cerino, Savino Bruno, Sonia Rossi, Giovanni Belloni, Bruno Brugnetti, Emilio Civardi, Laura Salvaneschi, Mario U. Mondelli – 1 February 1995 – Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection persists for an indefinite length of time in a major proportion of patients, inducing chronic liver lesions that evolve to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in approximately 20% of cases. We studied HCV viremia and genotypes by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) in 341 consecutive anti‐HCV–positive patients.

Hugo O. Jauregui, Claudy J‐P. Mullon, Donna Trenkler, Sharda Naik, Henry Santangini, Philip Press, Thomas E. Muller, Barry A. Solomon – 1 February 1995 – Orthotopic liver transplantation is the only effective form of therapy currently available for patients with fulminant hepatic failure (FHF). The use of an extracorporeal (EC) liver assist device (LAD) may result in improved presurgical clinical management.

Paul J. Thuluvath, David Edwin, Nancy Chang Yue, Cora Devilliers, Sandra Hochman, Andrew Klein – 1 February 1995 – Increased, symmetrical signals of varying intensity in the globus pallidi on T1‐weighted (T1W) images, without corresponding signals on T2‐weighted (T2W) images, have been reported previously in chronic hepatic failure, It has been suggested that these signals are characteristic of chronic hepatic encephalopathy.

A. Jake Demetris, Eric C. Seaberg, Kenneth P. Batts, Linda D. Ferrell, Jurgen Ludwig, Rodney S. Markin, Steven H. Belle, Katherine Detre – 1 February 1995 – Pathologists participating in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Liver Transplant Database (LTD) created a histopathological grading system for acute liver allograft rejection, and tested it first for inter‐ and intra‐rater reliability among a group of five pathologists experienced in liver and transplantation pathology.

Hirokazu Yago, Yutaka Kohgo, Junji Kato, Naoki Watanabe, Sumio Sakamaki, Yoshiro Niitsu – 1 February 1995 – We describe the first evidence that soluble asialoglycoprotein receptors (AGPR) are present in human serum and that they are quantifiable by an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). An affinity chromatography gel immobilized with monoclonal antibodies (McAbs) against human liver AGPR was mixed with normal sera, and the bound fraction was analyzed both by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and by Western blot analysis.

Jinlin Hou, Peter Karayiannis, Jenny Waters, Kangxian Luo, Chishen Liang, Howard C. Thomas – 1 February 1995 – The presence of unique hepatitis B virus (HBV) variants has been investigated in two Chinese patients with chronic liver disease, whose sera were positive for HBV‐DNA by dot blot hybridization or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) but hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)–negative by conventional polyclonal antibody based immunoassays.

Jürgen Scheibner, Michael Fuchs, Michael Schiemann, Eduard F. Stange – 1 February 1995 – In the current study, the role of the supply of preformed and newly synthesized cholesterol for the feedback control of the synthesis of different bile acids and the secretion of biliary cholesterol was investigated.