Matthias Goerig, Heinrich Wernze, Burkhard Kommerell, Martin Grün – 1 August 1989 – Metabolites of arachidonic acid have been attributed to severe circulatory, metabolic and hormonal alterations in patients with chronic liver disease. In order to study changes of the tissue‐specific availability of enzymes of eicosanoid synthesis, we used portacavalshunted rats, as this model exhibits many clinical and biochemical similarities to patients suffering from cirrhosis of the liver.

1 August 1989

Sonia M. F. de Morais, Peter G. Wells – 1 August 1989 – Glucuronidation is the major pathway for elimination of acetaminophen, diverting it from the toxifying pathway catalyzed by cytochromes P‐450. A genetic deficiency in bilirubin UDP‐glucuronyl transferase may predispose humans and animals to the toxicity of drugs that are extensively glucuronidated, if other glucuronyl transferase isoenzymes are concurrently deficient. Homozygous and heterozygous Gunn rats are, respectively, severely and moderately deficient in glucuronyl transferase.

Stephen J. Williams, Geoffrey C. Farrell – 1 August 1989 – The present study was performed to establish whether sequential determinations of antipyrine clearance, using a simplified two‐point test, are sensitive and specific indicators of changes in chronic hepatitis B disease activity. Sixteen patients were studied on four or more occasions during 18 to 30 months. Eleven patients were treated with recombinant human α‐interferon (2.5, 5.0 or 10 × 106 per m2, intramuscularly, three times per week, for 24 weeks), and five patients were untreated controls.

Martin Rössle, Jürgen Deckert, E. Anthony Jones – 1 August 1989 – To complement analogous studies using conventional ligand‐membrane binding assays, the densities of γ‐aminobutyric acid and benzodiazepine receptors in the brain have been assessed using an autoradiographic technique in an animal model of hepatic encephalopathy. Hepatic encephalopathy due to fulminant hepatic failure was induced in rabbits by the intravenous injection of galactosamine.

Oliver F. W. James, Stephen J. Yeaman, Margaret F. Bassendine – 1 August 1989

Klaus Fuchs, Claudia Heberger, Thomas Weimer, Michael Roggendorf – 1 August 1989 – Integration and transcription of woodchuck hepatitis virus DNA were studied by Southern and Northern blot analysis in 26 hepatocellular carcinomas and in adjacent nontumor tissue of woodchucks (Marmota monax).

Dominique Larrey, Alain Berson, François Habersetzer, Marina Tinel, Anne Castot, Gérard Babany, Philippe Lettéron, Eric Freneaux, Jacqueline Loeper, Patrick Dansette, Dominique Pessayre – 1 August 1989 – Amineptine‐induced immunoallergic hepatitis is unpredictable. It may be related to its oxidation into a reactive metabolite acting as hapten. We have looked for a possible genetic predisposition involving drug oxidation capacity and/or cell defense mechanisms in nine patients with previous amineptine hepatitis.

Kathryn B. O'Hare, Isabella C. Hume, Lynne Scarlett, Vladimir Chytrý, Pavla Kopećar;ková, Jindřich Kopeček, Ruth Duncan – 1 August 1989 – A series of copolymers were prepared containing 1,2:3,4‐di‐O‐isopropylidene‐6‐O‐methacryloyl‐α‐D‐galactopyranose (0 to 99 mol %, methacryoyltyrosi‐namide and N‐(2‐hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (99 to mol %). The effect of galactose content on interaction vith hepatoma cells in vitro was studied.

Maurizia Rossana Brunetto, Filippo Oliveri, Giuseppe Rocca, Domenico Criscuolo, Elisabetta Chiaberge, Maria Capalbo, Ezio David, Giorgio Verme, Ferruccio Bonino – 1 August 1989 – The course of chronic hepatitis B was studied in 30 patients who had antibody to hepatitis e antigen and hepatitis B virus DNA in the serum and hepatitis B core antigen in the liver. Over a 2‐year period, no patient experienced a sustained spontaneous remission of disease, and follow‐up liver histology revealed worsening of the disease in four patients.