Richard B. Freeman, Russell H. Wiesner, Erick Edwards, Ann Harper, Robert Merion, Robert Wolfe – 6 January 2004 – Liver allocation policy in the U.S. was recently changed to a continuous disease severity scale with minimal weight given to time waiting in an effort to better prioritize deceased donor liver transplant candidates. We compared rates of waiting list registrations, removals, transplants, and deaths during the year prior to implementation of the new liver allocation policy (2/27/01–2/26/02, Era 1) with the first year's experience (2/27/02–2/26/03, Era 2) under this new policy.

Pratima Sharma, Vijayan Balan, Jose L. Hernandez, Ann M. Harper, Erick B. Edwards, Hector Rodriguez‐Luna, Thomas Byrne, Hugo E. Vargas, David Mulligan, Jorge Rakela, Russell H. Wiesner – 6 January 2004 – The new allocation policy of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) based on the model for end‐stage liver disease (MELD) gives candidates with stage T1 or stage T2 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) a priority MELD score beyond their degree of hepatic decompensation.

Andrew Paul Keaveny, Fredric David Gordon, Atoussa Goldar‐Najafi, William David Lewis, Elizabeth Anne Pomfret, James John Pomposelli, Roger Lewin Jenkins, Urmila Khettry – 6 January 2004 – A retrospective analysis of 51 primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) patients who underwent liver transplant (LT) identified 16 with xanthogranulomatous cholangiopathy (XGC) at the native liver hilum. Pre‐LT clinical and laboratory data and post‐LT course and outcome of patients with XGC were compared with the 35 PSC patients without XGC.

Elisabetta Bugianesi, Paola Manzini, Sergio D'Antico, Ester Vanni, Filomena Longo, Nicola Leone, Paola Massarenti, Antonio Piga, Giulio Marchesini, Mario Rizzetto – 5 January 2004 – The mechanism(s) determining the progression from fatty liver to steatohepatitis is currently unknown. Our goal was to define the relative impact of iron overload, genetic mutations of HFE, and insulin resistance on the severity of liver fibrosis in a population of subjects with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) who had low prevalence of obesity and no overt symptoms of diabetes.

François Penin, Jean Dubuisson, Felix A. Rey, Darius Moradpour, Jean‐Michel Pawlotsky – 5 January 2004 – Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes acute and chronic liver disease in humans, including chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Studies of this virus have been hampered by the lack of a productive cell culture system; most information thus has been obtained from analysis of the HCV genome, heterologous expression systems, in vitro and in vivo models, and structural analyses.

Alessia Ciancio, Antonina Smedile, Mario Rizzetto, Marco Lagget, John Gerin, Brent Korba – 5 January 2004 – Numerous studies have shown that resistance to long‐term lamivudine therapy occurs in as many as ⅔ of hepatitis B virus (HBV) chronic carriers. Additional studies have shown that reversion of HBV mutations in the precore/core promoter region conferring an HBeAg‐negative phenotype/genotype can occur in up to 30% of lamivudine‐treated patients.

Gregory D. Kirk, Olufunmilayo A. Lesi, Maimuna Mendy, Aliu O. Akano, Omar Sam, James J. Goedert, Pierre Hainaut, Andrew J. Hall, Hilton Whittle, Ruggero Montesano – 5 January 2004 – Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common cancer in The Gambia. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is endemic, with 15% to 20% of the population being chronic carriers, whereas hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevalence is low. We recruited 216 incident cases of HCC and 408 controls from three sites.

Michael Torbenson, Rajesh Kannangai, Jacquie Astemborski, Steffanie A. Strathdee, David Vlahov, David L. Thomas – 5 January 2004 – Occult hepatitis B is defined by the presence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA in a serum or liver in the absence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). The prevalence and clinical correlates of occult hepatitis B remain incompletely defined. A cross‐sectional study was performed to determine the prevalence of occult hepatitis B in a high‐risk cohort composed of 188 injection drug users in Baltimore, Maryland.

Frank Lammert, David Q.‐H. Wang, Sonja Hillebrandt, Andreas Geier, Peter Fickert, Michael Trauner, Siegfried Matern, Beverly Paigen, Martin C. Carey – 5 January 2004 – Previously, we identified needle‐like and filamentous, putatively “anhydrous” cholesterol crystallization in vitro at very low phospholipid concentrations in model and native biles. Our aim now was to address whether spontaneous gallstone formation occurs in Mdr2 (Abcb4) knockout mice that are characterized by phospholipid‐deficient bile.

Lizhe Xu, Michael Sakalian, Zhiwei Shen, George Loss, James Neuberger, Andrew Mason – 5 January 2004 – Patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) have both serologic and tissue evidence of infection. A recently identified human betaretrovirus was originally cloned from the biliary epithelium cDNA library of a patient with PBC. By conducting a BLASTN search, the initial partial pol gene fragment was found to have 95% to 97% nucleotide homology with mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) and with retrovirus sequences derived from human breast cancer samples.