Lorenzo Azzalini, Elisabet Ferrer, Leandra N. Ramalho, Montserrat Moreno, Marlene Domínguez, Jordi Colmenero, Víctor I. Peinado, Joan A. Barberà, Vicente Arroyo, Pere Ginès, Joan Caballería, Ramón Bataller – 22 April 2010 – The prevalence of cigarette smoking (CS) is increased among obese subjects, who are susceptible to develop nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We investigated the hepatic effects of CS in control and obese rats. Control and obese Zucker rats were divided into smokers and nonsmokers (n = 12 per group).

Elise Andrews, Martin Armstrong, Jonathan Tugwood, Dan Swan, Philip Glaves, Munir Pirmohamed, Guruprasad P. Aithal, Matthew C. Wright, Christopher P. Day, Ann K. Daly – 22 April 2010 – Drug‐induced liver injury (DILI) due to flucloxacillin is a rare but serious complication of treatment. There is some evidence that flucloxacillin is a human pregnane X receptor (PXR) agonist. This study was designed to investigate the relevance of PXR to flucloxacillin toxicity and to identify genes changing in expression in response to flucloxacillin.

Michelle Lai – 22 April 2010

Peter Jepsen, Peter Ott, Per Kragh Andersen, Henrik Toft Sørensen, Hendrik Vilstrup – 22 April 2010 – The clinical course of alcoholic cirrhosis, a condition with a high mortality, has not been well described. We examined prevalence, risk, chronology, and mortality associated with three complications of cirrhosis: ascites, variceal bleeding, and hepatic encephalopathy. We followed a population‐based cohort of 466 Danish patients diagnosed with alcoholic cirrhosis in 1993–2005, starting from the date of hospital diagnosis and ending in August 2006.

Anne Davit‐Spraul, Monique Fabre, Sophie Branchereau, Christiane Baussan, Emmanuel Gonzales, Bruno Stieger, Olivier Bernard, Emmanuel Jacquemin – 22 April 2010 – Progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC) types 1 and 2 are characterized by normal serum gamma‐glutamyl transferase (GGT) activity and are due to mutations in ATP8B1 (encoding FIC1) and ABCB11 (encoding bile salt export pump [BSEP]), respectively. Our goal was to evaluate the features that may distinguish PFIC1 from PFIC2 and ease their diagnosis.

Hanning You, Wei Ding, C. Bart Rountree – 22 April 2010 – Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. CD133, a transmembrane glycoprotein, is an important cell surface marker for both stem cells and cancer stem cells in various tissues including liver. CD133 expression has been recently linked to poor prognosis in HCC patients. CD133+ liver cancer cells are characterized by resistance to chemotherapy, self‐renewal, multilineage potential, increased colony formation, and in vivo cancer initiation at limited dilution.

Adam P. Levene, Hiromi Kudo, Mark R. Thursz, Quentin M. Anstee, Robert D. Goldin – 22 April 2010

Ryan M. Gill, Linda D. Ferrell – 22 April 2010

Weihong Hou, Qing Tian, Jianyu Zheng, Herbert L. Bonkovsky – 22 April 2010 – Hepatitis C virus (HCV) directly induces oxidative stress and liver injury. Bach1, a basic leucine zipper mammalian transcriptional repressor, negatively regulates heme oxygenase 1 (HMOX1), a key cytoprotective enzyme that has antioxidant and anti‐inflammatory activities. microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs (≈22 nt) that are important regulators of gene expression. Whether and how miRNAs regulate Bach1 or HCV are largely unknown.

Wataru Ito, Shigeharu Ueki, Masahide Takeda, Tomomi Tanigai, Hiroyuki Kayaba, Junichi Chihara – 22 April 2010