Fin Stolze Larsen, Julia Wendon – 6 May 2009 – In patients with severe liver failure, brain edema is a frequent and serious complication that may result in high intracranial pressure and brain damage. This short article focuses on basic physiologic principles that determine water flux across the blood‐brain barrier. Using the Starling equation, it is evident that both the osmotic and hydrostatic pressure gradients are imbalanced across the blood‐brain barrier in patients with acute liver failure. This combination will tend to favor cerebral capillary water influx to the brain.

Briohny Smith, Jacob George – 28 April 2009

Nicholas S. Eyre, Thomas F. Baumert, Michael R. Beard – 28 April 2009

Jacob Nattermann, Frank Tacke – 28 April 2009

Claus J. Fimmel, Lorinda Wright – 28 April 2009

Paolo Muratori, Alessandro Granito, Georgios Pappas, Luigi Muratori – 28 April 2009

Saleem Kamili, Vitini Sozzi, Geoff Thompson, Katie Campbell, Christopher M. Walker, Stephen Locarnini, Krzysztof Krawczynski – 27 April 2009 – Hepatitis B virus (HBV) mutants resistant to treatment with nucleoside or nucleotide analogs and those with the ability to escape from HBV‐neutralizing antibody have the potential to infect HBV‐vaccinated individuals. To address this potential serious public health challenge, we tested the efficacy of immunity induced by a commercial hepatitis B vaccine against a tissue culture‐derived, clonal HBV polymerase mutant in HBV seronegative chimpanzees.

Marc‐Oliver Riener, Frank Stenner, Heike Liewen, Christopher Soll, Stefan Breitenstein, Bernhard Cornelius Pestalozzi, Panagiotis Samaras, Nicole Probst‐Hensch, Claus Hellerbrand, Beat Müllhaupt, Pierre‐Alain Clavien, Marcus Bahra, Peter Neuhaus, Peter Wild, Florian Fritzsche, Holger Moch, Wolfram Jochum, Glen Kristiansen – 27 April 2009 – Hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) and bile duct carcinomas (BDCs) have a poor prognosis. Therefore, surveillance strategies including sensitive and specific serum markers for early detection are needed.

Juliane I. Beier, James P. Luyendyk, Luping Guo, Claudia von Montfort, Donald E. Staunton, Gavin E. Arteel – 27 April 2009 – The early stages of alcohol‐induced liver injury involve chronic inflammation. Whereas mechanisms by which this effect is mediated are not completely understood, it is hypothesized that enhanced sensitivity to circulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contributes to this process. It has recently been shown that ethanol induces activation of plasminogen activator inhibitor‐1 (PAI‐1).

Mohamed Hassan, Denis Selimovic, Hanan Ghozlan, Ola Abdel‐kader – 27 April 2009 – Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with the production of serum cytokines, including transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β2. Despite the occurrence of hepatic angiogenesis in liver conditions, the role of HCV proteins in this context is currently unknown.