Ralph I. Horwitz, Donald R. Bordley – 1 January 1987 – Two specialists in nuclear medicine and two trainees independently read 106 liver scans for abnormalities suggestive of metastases. The four observers made a positive diagnosis with a significantly different frequency. The overall agreement between pairs of observers was 0.83–0.87. After adjusting for the expected chance agreement, K‐values between 0.66 and 0.74 were obtained. No difference was found in the level of agreement between the two specialists or between the two trainees.

James L. Boyer – 1 January 1987 – The discovery that bile canaliculi are capable of spontaneous contractile activity has led to their use in the investigation of the physiology of the liver cell. The contraction of a bile canaliculus is dependent on the network of actin, which is found in the pericanalicular region of the hepatocyte, and agents that inhibit actin filaments interfere with canalicular contraction. Injection of calcium directly into the cytoplasm of one hepatocyte of a cell pair results in contraction of the canaliculus.

Fernando Alvarez, Daniel Alagille – 1 January 1987 – To determine the frequency of biochemical vitamin E deficiency and of the clinical signs of the vitamin E deficiency neurologic syndrome in children with prolonged neonatal cholestatic disorders, we studied 46 children (aged 1 month to 17.0 years) with chronic forms of intrahepatic neonatal cholestasis and 47 children (aged 4 months to 8.0 years) with extrahepatic biliary atresia.

Richard A. Kozarek, Harold O. Conn – 1 January 1987 – Five patients with benign strictures of the biliary tract were treated by Gruntzig balloon dilation during endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography. All of the strictures were effectively dilated. One patient with a retained stone in the proximal biliary tree underwent surgery 3 weeks after the dilation because of cholangitis. The other four patients were well at a mean follow‐up of 6 months. There were no complications related to the procedure.

1 January 1987

Arie J. Zuckerman – 1 January 1987

Elizabeth B. Haagsma, Michael Manns, Reinhild Klein, Joris Grond, Johannes R. Huizenga, Maarten J. H. Slooff, Karl‐Hermann Meyer Zum Büschenfelde, Peter A. Berg, Chris H. Gips – 1 January 1987 – Antimitochondrial antibodies are markers for primary biliary cirrhosis and probably reflect a specific defect in immunoregulation underlying this disease. Antimitochondrial antibodies and their primary biliary cirrhosis‐specific subtypes were tested before and up to 6 years after orthotopic liver transplantation.

William S. Robinson, Roger H. Miller, Patricia L. Marion – 1 January 1987 – The hepadnavirus (1–3) family includes hepatitis B virus (HBV), woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) (4), ground squirrel hepatitis virus (GSHV) (5) and duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) (6). These viruses share unique ultrastructural, molecular and biological features. HBV has great medical importance in many parts of the world. More important numerically than acute hepatitis B in high prevalence geographic regions is the liver disease associated with chronic infection.

Allan R. Shatzman, Martin Rosenberg – 1 January 1987 – There are numerous proteins of biological interest which cannot be obtained from natural sources in quantities sufficient for detailed biochemical and physical analysis. The limited bioavailability of these molecules has made it impossible to consider their potential utilization as either pharmacological agents and/or targets. One solution to this problem has been the development of recombinant vector systems which are designed to achieve efficient expression of cloned genes in a variety of biological systems.

Thomas D. Boyer – 1 January 1987