Demonstration of interstitial cerebral edema with diffusion tensor MR imaging in type C hepatic encephalopathy

Ravindra A. Kale, Rakesh K. Gupta, Vivek A. Saraswat, Khader M. Hasan, Richa Trivedi, Asht M. Mishra, Piyush Ranjan, Chandra M. Pandey, Ponnada A. Narayana – 23 March 2006 – Brain water may increase in hepatic encephalopathy (HE). Diffusion tensor imaging was performed in patients with cirrhosis with or without HE to quantify the changes in brain water diffusivity and to correlate it with neuropsychological (NP) tests. Thirty‐nine patients with cirrhosis, with minimal (MHE) or overt HE, were studied and compared to 18 controls.

Nitration of cardiac proteins is associated with abnormal cardiac chronotropic responses in rats with biliary cirrhosis

Ali R. Mani, Silvia Ippolito, Richard Ollosson, Kevin P. Moore – 23 March 2006 – Acceleration of the heart rate in response to catecholamines is impaired in cirrhosis. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that increased formation of reactive nitrogen species in biliary cirrhosis causes nitration of cardiac proteins and leads to impaired chronotropic function. Bile duct–ligated (rats with cirrhosis) or sham‐operated rats were injected daily with either saline, NG‐L‐nitro‐arginine methyl ester (L‐NAME), or N‐acetylcysteine for 7 days from week 3 to week 4 after surgery.

S‐adenosylmethionine and betaine correct hepatitis C virus induced inhibition of interferon signaling in vitro

Francois H. T. Duong, Verena Christen, Magdalena Filipowicz, Markus H. Heim – 23 March 2006 – Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is an important cause of chronic liver disease. Standard therapy, pegylated interferon α (pegIFNα) combined with ribavirin, results in a sustained response rate in approximately half of patients. The cause of treatment failure in the other half of the patients is unknown, but viral interference with IFNα signal transduction through the Jak‐STAT pathway might be an important factor.

Noncirrhotic portal vein thrombosis exhibits neuropsychological and MR changes consistent with minimal hepatic encephalopathy

Beatriz Mínguez, Juan Carlos García‐Pagán, Jaume Bosch, Juan Turnes, Juli Alonso, Alex Rovira, Juan Córdoba – 23 March 2006 – Hepatic encephalopathy can arise from portal‐systemic shunting in the absence of intrinsic liver disease. However, there are few descriptions of this form of encephalopathy. Portal vein thrombosis is an infrequent disease that causes portal‐systemic shunting. Episodic hepatic encephalopathy has been described in patients with portal vein thrombosis, but it is not known if these patients develop minimal hepatic encephalopathy.

Hepatocellular neoplasms after intrahepatic transplantation of ovarian fragments into ovariectomized rats

Frank Dombrowski, Clarissa Flaschka, Luisa Klotz, Barbara von Netzer, Carla Schulz, Hendrik Lehnert, Matthias Evert – 23 March 2006 – Intrahepatic transplantation of ovarian fragments in ovariectomized rats results in morphological abnormalities. The liver acini draining blood from ovarian grafts show alterations resembling chemically induced amphophilic hepatocellular preneoplasias. We investigated the long‐term development of these estrogen‐induced foci of altered hepatocytes (FAH).

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