Anil Dhawan, Rachel M. Taylor, Paul Cheeseman, Pamela De Silva, Leah Katsiyiannakis, Giorgina Mieli‐Vergani – 21 March 2005 – Wilson's disease (WD) is a rare liver‐based disorder of copper metabolism. Prognostic criteria described by our group in 1986 to predict death without transplantation have not been universally validated. The clinical features of 88 children were reviewed, retrospectively in 74 and prospectively in 14.

Marcus K.H. Auth, Dirk Woitaschek, Mechthild Beste, Thomas Schreiter, Hyun Soo Kim, Elsie Oppermann, Ruth E. Joplin, Ulrich Baumann, Philip Hilgard, Silvio Nadalin, Bernd H. Markus, Roman A. Blaheta – 21 March 2005 – Bioartificial liver support systems have demonstrated limited efficacy in compensation of liver detoxification and substitution of liver‐derived factors. However, in these devices, the biological substitution of the complex liver function has been restricted to xenogeneic or transformed hepatocytes.

Elisa Faybush, David C. Mulligan, Barry D. Birch, Joseph I. Sirven, Vijayan Balan – 21 March 2005 – There are no published accounts of patients with ventriculoperitoneal shunts undergoing liver transplantation in the literature. Because patients with ventriculoperitoneal shunts are prone to infections, this may be a theoretical contraindication to transplantation. We present a case of a patient with cirrhosis who had a ventriculoperitoneal shunt placed many years prior to transplantation. The patient had no neurological complications and the shunt was intact and functioning.

Antonio Cuadrado, Emilio Fábrega, Fernando Casafont, Fernando Pons‐Romero – 21 March 2005 – The aim of this study was to evaluate the rate of alcohol recidivism after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) for alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and its influence on the allograft and patient survival, as well as the development of comorbidities and de novo cancers. The study was performed on 54 subjects previously analyzed and transplanted in our center for ALD, whose follow‐up was prolonged to a mean of 99.2 (SD 31.7) months (range, 14–155).

Hideaki Okajima, Atsushi Kotera, Takayuki Takeichi, Mikako Ueno, Taketoshi Ishiko, Masahiko Hirota, Katsuhiro Asonuma, Eijiro Yamauchi, Yukihiro Inomata – 21 March 2005

Cyrille Féray – 21 March 2005

21 March 2005

Aileen Marshall, Simon Rushbrook, Lesley S. Morris, Ian S. Scott, Sarah L. Vowler, Susan E. Davies, Nicholas Coleman, Graeme Alexander – 21 March 2005 – Although graft infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) occurs in virtually all patients transplanted for HCV‐related liver disease, the outcome ranges from minimal disease to the rapid development of cirrhosis. Induction of hepatocyte cell cycle entry followed by inhibition of cell cycle progression has been proposed as a potential mechanism whereby HCV may cause hepatocyte dysfunction and may promote fibrogenesis.

J. Wallis Marsh, Sydney D. Finkelstein, Myron E. Schwartz, M. Isabel Fiel, Igor Dvorchik – 21 March 2005 – We analyzed global gene expression patterns of 91 human hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) to define the molecular characteristics of the tumors and to test the prognostic value of the expression profiles. Unsupervised classification methods revealed two distinctive subclasses of HCC that are highly associated with patient survival. This association was validated via 5 independent supervised learning methods.

Salvador Benlloch, Marina Berenguer, Martín Prieto, José Miguel Rayón, Victoria Aguilera, Joaquín Berenguer – 21 March 2005 – Recurrent hepatitis C is a frequent event in liver transplantation (LT). Serial liver biopsies remain the best way of monitoring disease progression. Due to the limitations of a liver biopsy, there is an interest in developing noninvasive markers of liver fibrosis. While several models for predicting fibrosis have been constructed in patients who have not undergone transplantation, these are lacking in the transplant population.