Markus Meyer, Klaus Hermann Wiedorn, Peter Hans Hofschneider, Rajen Koshy, Wolfgang Helmut Caselmann – 1 April 1992 – Chronic hepatitis B virus infection is often associated with major structural rearrangements of both the integrated viral DNA and the associated cellular sequences. We present here the structure of a single‐copy hepatitis B virus insert cloned from human hepatocellular carcinoma DNA recently reported to encode a novel transcriptional trans‐activator function.

Philip Board, Toshirou Nishida, Zenaida Gatmaitan, Mingxin Che, Irwin M. Arias – 1 April 1992 – The Dubin‐Johnson syndrome is manifested by conjugated hyperbilirubinemia and pigment accumulation in hepatocellular lysosomes. The TR‐ rat model is a phenotypic model of the Dubin‐Johnson syndrome and is characterized by defective ATP‐dependent transport of a group of nonbile acid organic anions, including glutathione‐S‐conjugates and oxidized glutathione, across the bile canaliculus. Similar ATP‐dependent transport mechanisms have been described in erythrocytes.

John H. McAfee, Emmet B. Keeffe, Randall G. Lee, Josef Rösch – 1 April 1992

1 April 1992

Nancy Bach, Swan N. Thung, Fenton Schaffner – 1 April 1992 – Before the availability of serological markers for hepatitis C, the morphological features of this diagnosis, which represents most non‐A, non‐B hepatitis, could not be confirmed. We examined biopsy specimens from 50 patients with chronic hepatitis C and 21 patients with autoimmune chronic hepatitis. Each biopsy specimen was graded on 19 different histological features. The results indicated that at the time of biopsy, the average age of patients with chronic hepatitis C was 46 yr vs. 36 yr for autoimmune chronic hepatitis.

Sadataka Inuzuka, Takato Ueno, Takuji Torimura, Seishu Tamaki, Ryuichiro Sakata, Michio Sata, Hiroshi Yoshida, Kyuichi Tanikawa – 1 April 1992 – The concentration of plasma vitronectin was determined and compared with various parameters of liver function including the blood coagulation system in patients with liver diseases. The severity of cirrhosis was graded according to Child's criteria and compared with the plasma vitronectin level.

Helmut K. Wolf, George K. Michalopoulos – 1 April 1992 – It has been suggested that in fulminant hepatitis it is the lack of hepatocyte regeneration that in the presence of an ongoing loss of hepatocytes leads to hepatic failure and ultimately determines the grim prognosis of this disease. However, little data are available concerning hepatocyte regeneration in human acute hepatitis.

Antonio M. Lacy, Miguel Navasa, Rosa Gilabert, Concepción Brü, Juan C. García‐Pagán, Juan C. García‐Valdecasas, Luis Grande, Fausto Feu, José Fuster, José Terés, José Visa, Jaime Bosch – 1 April 1992 – We studied 23 patients with cirrhosis who had undergone retroperitoneal distal splenorenal shunt without portal‐azygos disconnection more than 2 yr earlier.

Michael A. Gerber – 1 April 1992

Eldon A. Shaffer – 1 April 1992 – A 45‐minute infusion of an octapeptide of cholecystokinin (Kinevac; Squibb Diagnostics, New Brunswick, NJ) was used to measure the gallbladder ejection fraction during cholescintigraphy in 40 normal volunteers. Cholecystokinin cholescintigraphy was shown to be a reproducible test. The maximum mean gallbladder ejection fraction occurred 15 minutes after cholecystokinin infusion and was 74.5% ± 1.9% (mean ± SEM). A gallbladder ejection fraction >40% (mean – 3SD) was arbitrarily defined to be normal.