Peter R. Gibson, J. Robert E. Fraser, Tracey J. Brown, Caroline F. Finch, Penelope A. Jones, John C. Colman, Francis J. Dudley – 1 June 1992 – To define hepatic predictors of serum hyaluronan in patients with chronic liver disease, 62 patients with alcoholic liver disease were evaluated. In group 1, 30 patients had concurrent assessment of serum hyaluronan, liver function tests, Pugh grade and hemodynamic indices. A second, overlapping group of 42 patients (group 2) also had antipyrine clearance measured but without hemodynamic assessment.

Katryn N. Furuya, Patricia E. Burrows, M. James Phillips, Eve A. Roberts – 1 June 1992 – Transjugular liver biopsy is widely used in adult patients with liver disease when transthoracic needle liver biopsy is contraindicated by severe coagulopathy or ascites. It has not been used extensively in children. We report our experience with 30 consecutive transjugular liver biopsy procedures performed in 27 young patients at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Patient weights ranged from 14 to 91 kg (median = 42 kg); most patients had not yet attained adult size.

Siegfried Walker, Heinz‐Peter Kreichgauer, J. Christian Bode – 1 June 1992 – Fifty episodes of bleeding from esophageal or gastric varices in 33 patients with cirrhosis were randomized to treatment with either intravenous terlipressin (2 mg initially and 1 mg every 4 hr for 24 hr together with bolus injection and continuous infusion of placebo) or with somatostatin (250 μg as a bolus and continuous infusion of 250 μg/hr somatostatin for 24 hr and placebo injections). Standard therapy with transfusions, fluid and electrolyte correction and lactulose was administered in both groups.

Renee E. Poupon, Bertrand Nalpas, Christiane Coutelle, Benoit Fleury, Patrice Couzigou, Denise Higueret – 1 June 1992 – Two types of factors can theoretically modulate alcohol metabolism toward increased acetaldehyde production. These factors are the following: (a) individual, genetically determined isoenzymes with distinct catalytic properties, and (b) modifications of enzyme activity induced by alcohol itself or liver damage.

Fumihiro Nozu, Naoshi Takeyama, Takaya Tanaka – 1 June 1992 – Hepatic mitochondrial functions related to fatty acid metabolism, including the respiratory control ratio, fatty acid oxidative capacity and carnitine palmitoyltransferase I activity, were studied in vitro with mitochondria isolated from rats treated with thioacetamide for up to 12 wk. The levels of ketone bodies, carnitine, carnitine esters and malonyl–coenzyme A were also determined in liver extracts.

Anna S. F. Lok, Ramsey Cheung, Rachel Chan, Vincent Liu – 1 June 1992 – Sera from 103 patients were tested for hepatitis C virus RNA by nested polymerase chain reaction assay. Using primers from the highly conserved 5′untranslated region, we detected hepatitis C virus RNA in 67 (88.2%) of 76 patients positive for antibody to hepatitis C virus by both second‐generation and neutralization enzyme immunoassays. Hepatitis C virus RNA was detected in 93% of patients who had been infected for 10 yr or less and in 89% of those who had been infected for longer than 10 yr.

Stanley M. Lemon – 1 June 1992

Stefan Krähenbühl, Jörg Stucki, Jürg Reichen – 1 June 1992 – Mitochondrial metabolism was studied in liver mitochondria isolated from rats with secondary biliary cirrhosis induced by bile duct ligation for 5 wk. State 3 oxidation rates were decreased in mitochondrial preparations from bile duct—ligated rats as compared with sham‐operated control rats by 63% and 42% using β‐hydroxybutyrate and succinate as substrates, respectively. In contrast, when the substrate was ascorbate/N, N, N′, N′‐tetramethyl‐p‐phenylenediamine state 3 oxidation rates were not affected by bile duct ligation.

Masayuki Okido, Shuji Shimizu, J. Donald Ostrow, Fumio Nakayama – 1 June 1992 – We have previously isolated from 13 cholesterol gallstones a low molecular weight acidic bili‐protein that inhibited the precipitation of calcium carbonate in vitro. We now report the isolation of a similar protein from seven black pigment gallstones. Cholesterol was removed from the stones by Soxhlet apparatus with methyl t‐butyl ether, and bile acids were extracted with methanol.

1 June 1992