David P. Breen, Anthony M. Marinaki, Monica Arenas, Peter C. Hayes – 22 June 2005 – Azathioprine (AZA) is a thiopurine prodrug commonly used in triple‐immunosuppressive therapy following liver transplantation. Approximately 1 in 10 patients suffers side effects in response to the drug, the most problematic being bone marrow toxicity. There is evidence that polymorphisms in the genes encoding thiopurine methyltransferase (TPMT) and inosine triphosphate pyrophosphatase (ITPase) predict adverse drug reactions to AZA therapy.

Nicholas Onaca, Solly Mizrahi, Nathan Bar Nathan, Idan Burstein, Eytan Mor – 22 June 2005

John A. Goss, Philip Seu, Feng Qin Gao, Samuel Wyllie – 22 June 2005 – The recently identified acute‐phase response antimicrobial peptide hepcidin has been postulated to maintain iron homeostasis by modulating iron absorption at both the intestinal and macrophage levels. Hepcidin has also been reported to be responsible for anemia associated with chronic inflammatory diseases, and in anemia in patients with hepatic adenomas.

Chung Mau Lo, Chi Leung Liu, George K. Lau, See Ching Chan, Irene O. Ng, Sheung Tat Fan – 22 June 2005 – Lamivudine treatment in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection may improve clinical state and suppress viral replication before liver transplantation. Emergence of lamivudine‐resistant YMDD mutant is common. We report the results of liver transplantation in 16 patients with pretransplantation YMDD mutants after receiving lamivudine treatment for a median of 738 days (range, 400‐1799 days).

Russell H. Wiesner, Jolene S. Shorr, Bettina J. Steffen, Alice H. Chu, Robert D. Gordon, John R. Lake – 22 June 2005 – To evaluate the impact of mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) on long‐term outcomes of tacrolimus and corticosteroids, we analyzed data reported to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients for 11,670 adult patients (3463 with hepatitis C [HCV]) who underwent primary, single‐organ, liver transplantation between 1995 and 2001.

Norah Terrault, Bruno Roche, Didier Samuel – 22 June 2005

22 June 2005

Benjamin L. Shneider, Ezequiel Neimark, Tamara Frankenberg, Lindsay Arnott, Frederick J. Suchy, Sukru Emre – 22 June 2005 – The Pediatric End‐Stage Liver Disease (PELD) scoring system is a new nationally utilized formula developed to provide a continuous numerical assessment of the risk of death in order to allocate livers to children for transplantation.

Harald F. Teutsch – 17 June 2005 – The morphological homogeneity of the liver parenchyma has represented a major obstacle in finding an acceptable definition of the structural/functional units of the liver. Concepts such as the “lobule,” the “portal unit” and the “acinus” remain debatable. This study investigates the modular microarchitecture on the basis of the lobular concept. Using alkaline phosphatase activity as a histochemical marker, modules could be recognized clearly.

Sabine Stahl, Carina Ittrich, Philip Marx‐Stoelting, Christoph Köhle, Özge Altug‐Teber, Olaf Riess, Michael Bonin, Jürgen Jobst, Stephan Kaiser, Albrecht Buchmann, Michael Schwarz – 17 June 2005 – Experimentally induced liver tumors in mice harbor activating mutations in either Catnb (β‐catenin) or Ha‐ras, according to the carcinogenic treatment. We have now investigated by microarray analysis the gene expression profiles in tumors of the two genotypes.