Bruce A. Runyon – 1 January 1988

Dieter Haüssinger – 1 January 1988 – 1Rates of urea synthesis were determined in periportal and pericentral regions of the liver lobule in perfused liver from fed, phenobarbital‐treated rats by measuring the extra O2 consumed upon infusion of NH4Cl with miniature O2 electrodes and from decreases in NADPH fluorescence detected with micro‐light‐guides.2Urea synthesis by the perfused rat liver supplemented with lactate (5 mM), ornithine (2 mM) and methionine sulfoximine (0.15 mM), an inhibitor of glutamine synthetase, was stimulated by stepwise infusion of NH4Cl at doses ranging from 0.24 mM t

Peter V. Tishler – 1 January 1988 – Günther's disease, or congenital erythropoietic porphyria, is a rare autosomal recessive disorder of heme biosynthesis characteristically associated with diminished uroporphyrinogen III cosynthetase activity. Disfiguring photomutilation starts in childhood. Avoidance of sunlight has been the only sure way to prevent or retard photosensitivity. The treatments that have been tried have had limited success. A partial benefit after splenectomy has been reported, but there is little evidence of specific, long‐term improvement.

J. Lacey Smith, David Y. Graham – 1 January 1988 – Variation in time of patient admission to studies of prognosis after variceal hemorrhage has been proposed as a major factor in the wide range of reported results. A study of 144 unselected subjects with a low initial mortality (3% at two days) suggests that the effect has been overemphasized and studies in which time of entry is later than the date of bleeding may be usefully compared. Reanalysis of previous work suggests that even in populations with a high initial mortality limited comparisons between studies can still be usefully made.

1 January 1988

M. Eric Gershwin, Ross L. Coppel, Ian R. Mackay – 1 January 1988

Mario Chojkier, David A. Brenner – 1 January 1988

The Italian Multicenter Project for Propranolol in Prevention of Bleeding – 1 January 1988 – To assess if propranolol prevents the first bleeding in cirrhosis, we randomly assigned 174 patients with large varices to either propranolol in doses reducing the resting heart rate by 25% (85 patients) or to a placebo (oral vitamin K, 89 patients). Sixty‐nine patients had alcoholic cirrhosis, 24 posthepatitic cirrhosis and 81 cryp‐togenic cirrhosis.

Francesco Salerno, Salvatore Badalamenti, Pierluigi Incerti, Loredana Capozza, Laura Mainardi – 1 January 1988 – Sodium retention in liver cirrhosis is thought to be due to, among other things, lack of a natriuretic factor or failure to respond to one. α‐Human‐atrial natriuretic peptide is a peptide that accounts partly or entirely for the circulating natriuretic activity in man.

Gerald Y. Minuk, Keith L. Maccannell – 1 January 1988 – Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were recorded in 176 ambulant patients with chronic liver disease, including 36 patients with compensated cirrhosis (Group I), 119 patients with noncirrhotic chronic liver disease (Group II) and 21 patients with benign structural or functional liver disease (Group III).