Riccardo Superina – 28 January 2012

Sanjeev K. Akkina, Sumeet K. Asrani, Yi Peng, Peter Stock, W. Ray Kim, Ajay K. Israni – 28 January 2012 – Because of the shortage of deceased donor organs, transplant centers accept organs from marginal deceased donors, including older donors. Organ‐specific donor risk indices have been developed to predict graft survival with various combinations of donor and recipient characteristics. Here we review the kidney donor risk index (KDRI) and the liver donor risk index (LDRI) and compare and contrast their strengths, limitations, and potential uses.

Luca Valenti, Anna Alisi, Valerio Nobili – 27 January 2012

Gennaro D'Amico, Fabio Tine – 27 January 2012

Margaret A. Scull, Alexander Ploss – 27 January 2012

Linkang Zhou, Li Xu, Jing Ye, De Li, Wenshan Wang, Xuanhe Li, Lizhen Wu, Hui Wang, Feifei Guan, Peng Li – 25 January 2012 – High levels of dietary saturated fat have been closely associated with the development of hepatic steatosis, but the factors that mediate this process remain elusive. Here, we observed that the level of cell death‐inducing DNA fragmentation factor‐alpha‐like effector a (Cidea) expression was highly correlated with the severity of hepatic steatosis in humans.

Ashley M. Lakner, Nury M. Steuerwald, Tracy L. Walling, Sriparna Ghosh, Ting Li, Iain H. McKillop, Mark W. Russo, Herbert L. Bonkovsky, Laura W. Schrum – 25 January 2012 – Hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation is a pivotal event in initiation and progression of hepatic fibrosis and a major contributor to collagen deposition driven by transforming growth factor beta (TGF‐β). MicroRNAs (miRs), small noncoding RNAs modulating messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein expression, have emerged as key regulatory molecules in chronic liver disease.

Qing‐Bing Wang, Hui Zhu, Hai‐Ling Liu, Bei Zhang – 25 January 2012 – A meta‐analysis was performed to assess and compare the accuracies of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) and diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) for the staging of hepatic fibrosis. Online journal databases and a manual search from January 2000 to May 2011 were used. We identified 41 studies, but only 14 met the criteria to perform a meta‐analysis assessing MRE (five trials) or DWI (10 trials). Fibrosis was categorized by redistribution into five stages according to histopathological description.

Angela L. Rasmussen, Nicolas Tchitchek, Nathan J. Susnow, Alexei L. Krasnoselsky, Deborah L. Diamond, Matthew M. Yeh, Sean C. Proll, Marcus J. Korth, Kathie‐Anne Walters, Sharon Lederer, Anne M. Larson, Robert L. Carithers, Arndt Benecke, Michael G. Katze – 25 January 2012 – Liver failure resulting from chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause for liver transplantation worldwide. Recurrent infection of the graft is universal in HCV patients after transplant and results in a rapid progression to severe fibrosis and end‐stage liver disease in one third of all patients.

Nicolás Merchante, Antonio Rivero‐Juárez, Francisco Téllez, Dolores Merino, Maria José Ríos‐Villegas, Manuel Márquez‐Solero, Mohamed Omar, Juan Macías, Ángela Camacho, Montserrat Pérez‐Pérez, Jesús Gómez‐Mateos, Antonio Rivero, Juan Antonio Pineda, on behalf of the Grupo Andaluz para el Estudio de las Hepatitis Víricas (HEPAVIR) de la Sociedad Andaluza de Enfermedades Infecciosas (SAEI) – 25 January 2012 – Our aim was to assess the predictive value of liver stiffness (LS), measured by transient elastography (TE), for clinical outcome in human immunodeficiency virus / hepatitis C virus (HIV/