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.

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.

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.

Jarbas R. de Oliveira, Jose Luis Rosa, Santiago Ambrosio, Ramon Bartrons – 1 June 1992 – Intraperitoneal administration of galactosamine (400 mg/kg body wt) to rats results in reversible liver cell injury that is related to a dose‐dependent depletion of uridine phosphates by formation of UDP‐sugar derivatives. This damage was monitored through changes in serum enzymatic activities that increased after the first 6 hr of drug administration. Glycemia and serum albumin remained stable during liver injury, whereas cholesterol and triglycerides decreased.

Lola M. Reid, Anthony S. Fiorino, Samuel H. Sigal, Shlomo Brill, Patricia A. Holst – 1 June 1992

Shigetoshi Fujiyama, Shiro Iino, Koichi Odoh, Shoji Kuzuhara, Hiroaki Watanabe, Masahiko Tanaka, Kyosuke Mizuno, Tatsuo Sato – 1 June 1992 – To investigate the antibody titer necessary to prevent hepatitis A virus infection, either 15 or 7.5 mg/kg of immune serum globulin was injected into 10 antihepatitis A virus negative volunteers and their serum antihepatitis A virus titers were observed for 28 wk. In addition, antibody titers were observed for 96 wk in a phase 1 clinical trial of a hepatitis A vaccine.

Akira Eguchi, Osamu Nakashima, Sadayuki Okudaira, Shigetaka Sugihara, Masamichi Kojiro – 1 May 1992 – The nodular lesions seen in the noncancerous areas of the 80 consecutively resected small hepatocellular carcinoma associated with cirrhosis were pathomorphologically studied. A total of 51 nodular lesions were found, and they were classified into the following four groups: large regenerative nodule (30 nodules), adenomatous hyperplasia (12 nodules), atypical adenomatous hyperplasia (4 nodules) and adenomatous hyperplasia containing cancerous foci (5 nodules).

Chia‐Ming Chu, King‐Wah Chiu, Yun‐Fan Liaw – 1 May 1992 – The prevalence and prognostic significance of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis were prospectively studied in a series of 82 acute hepatitis patients decompensated with ascites. The in‐hospital prevalence of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis was 31.7% (26 of 82 patients). Twenty cases were culture positive, including one with multiple isolates, and six cases were culture negative. E.

Jean‐François Dufour, Christopher Stoupis, François Lazeyras, Peter Vock, François Terrier, Jürg Reichen – 1 May 1992 – Quantitative liver function tests are based on the clearance concept and measure the plasma disappearance of a test compound such as galactose. Metabolism is inferred to be predominantly hepatic, and usually no knowledge is obtained of the true time course of metabolite formation. Dynamic 31phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy after intravenous administration of fructose directly measures hepatic sugar metabolism.

Katriina Nikkilä, Krister Höckerstedt, Tatu A. Miettinen – 1 May 1992 – Serum noncholesterol sterols indicate overall cholesterol metabolism in a variety of experimental and clinical conditions. In patients with advanced primary biliary cirrhosis serum cholestanol, a 5ä‐derivative of cholesterol, is markedly increased, and cholesterol precursors, which are indicators of cholesterol synthesis, are clearly reduced, as is the ratio of plant sterols (campesterol/sitosterol).