Fabio Piscaglia, Alice Gianstefani, Roberto Righini, Luigi Bolondi – 30 July 2007

Ziv Ben‐Ari, Orit Pappo, Yelena Cheporko, Natali Yasovich, Daniel Offen, Asher Shainberg, Dorit Leshem, Jacquelin Sulkes, Bernardo A. Vidne, Edith Hochhauser – 30 July 2007 – Apoptosis appears to be a central mechanism of cell death following reperfusion of the ischemic liver. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of decreased expression of the proapoptotic Bax gene on hepatic apoptotic warm ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Three groups of mice were studied: homozygotic knockout mice (Bax−/−); heterozygotic (Bax+/−); and wild type (Bax+/+).

Mitsuhisa Takatsuki, Susumu Eguchi, Takashi Kanematsu – 30 July 2007

Burckhardt Ringe, Ralph J. Petrucci, Humberto E. Soriano, James C. Reynolds, William C. Meyers – 30 July 2007 – In children with acute hepatic failure, it has been suggested to offer living donor transplantation to all parents when a deceased donor organ can not be provided. Ethically, living related donation is coercive by its very nature, especially in emergencies. We report a 36‐year‐old woman who died from a drug overdose 57 days after living donor liver resection. The recipient was her 3‐year‐old son, who experienced acute hepatic failure as a result of acetaminophen intoxication.

Roman Perri, Maha Assi, Jayant Talwalkar, Julie Heimbach, William Hogan, S. Breanndan Moore, Charles B. Rosen – 30 July 2007 – Graft‐vs.‐host disease (GVHD) is a rare, serious complication of orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). We have treated 5 patients to date with GVHD after OLT. A total of 78 patients worldwide have been reported to have experienced this complication. The means by which GVHD after OLT has been managed is guided by experience with the more common GVHD that occurs after stem cell transplantation.

Munira Hussain, Consuelo Soldevila‐Pico, Sukru Emre, Velimir Luketic, Anna S.F. Lok – 30 July 2007 – Previous studies reported that hepatitis B virus (HBV) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can be detected in livers of patients who received transplants for hepatitis B despite the absence of serological markers of HBV recurrence. Quantification of HBV DNA was not performed and presence of covalently closed circular (ccc) DNA was not analyzed in most studies.

Suthat Liangpunsakul, Naga P. Chalasani – 30 July 2007

Omar Cauli, Regina Rodrigo, Blanca Piedrafita, Jordi Boix, Vicente Felipo – 27 July 2007 – One of the neurological alterations in patients with minimal or overt hepatic encephalopathy is cognitive impairment. This impairment is reproduced in rats with chronic liver failure due to portacaval shunt (PCS). These rats show decreased ability to learn a conditional discrimination task in a Y‐maze, likely due to reduced function of the glutamate–nitric oxide (NO)–cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) pathway in brain.

Mitchell L. Shiffman, Jennifer Salvatore, Sarah Hubbard, Angie Price, Richard K. Sterling, R. Todd Stravitz, Velimir A. Luketic, Arun J. Sanyal – 27 July 2007 – Successful treatment of chronic HCV with peginterferon (PEGIFN) and ribavirin (RVN) is often limited by anemia. We performed the present study to determine if utilizing epoetin alpha (EPO) with or without a higher dose of RVN could enhance sustained virologic response (SVR).

Monica Miozzo, Carlo Selmi, Barbara Gentilin, Francesca R. Grati, Silvia Sirchia, Sabine Oertelt, Massimo Zuin, M. Eric Gershwin, Mauro Podda, Pietro Invernizzi – 27 July 2007 – Recent work has demonstrated enhanced X monosomy in women with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) as well as two other female‐predominant autoimmune diseases, systemic sclerosis and autoimmune thyroid disease.