Jeremy M. Palmer, Amanda J. Robe, Alastair D. Burt, John A. Kirby, David E. J. Jones – 27 May 2004 – The autoimmune liver disease primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is characterized by the breakdown of normal immune self tolerance to pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC). How tolerance is broken to such a central and highly conserved self antigen in the initiation of autoimmunity remains unclear. One postulated mechanism is that reactivity arises to an altered form of self antigen with subsequent cross‐reactivity to native self.

Jens Bukh – 27 May 2004 – Chimpanzees remain the only recognized animal model for the study of hepatitis C virus (HCV). Studies performed in chimpanzees played a critical role in the discovery of HCV and are continuing to play an essential role in defining the natural history of this important human pathogen. In the absence of a reproducible cell culture system, the infectivity titer of HCV challenge pools can be determined only in chimpanzees.

Hans Christian Spangenberg, Robert Thimme, Hubert E. Blum – 27 May 2004 – Hepatitis B virus (hepadnavirus) infections are maintained by the presence of a small and regulated number of episomal viral genomes [covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA)] in the nuclei of infected cells. Although a number of studies have measured the mean copy number of cccDNA molecules in hepadnaviral‐infected cells, the distribution of individual copy numbers have not been reported.

Roman Huber, Birgit Hockenjos, Hubert E. Blum – 27 May 2004 – We report 13 patients (10 with chronic hepatitis C, 1 with chronic hepatitis B, 2 with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis) with persistently elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels who were treated with dimethyl‐4,4′‐dimethoxy‐5,6,5′,6‐dimethylenedioxybiphenyl‐2,2′ dicarboxylate (DDB). ALT rapidly normalized in 12/13 patients and remained normal during treatment. Unlike ALT levels, aspartate aminotransferase, gamma‐glutamyl transferase and glutamate dehydrogenase levels were not affected.

Paola Loria, Amedeo Lonardo, Nicola Carulli – 27 May 2004

Craig J. McClain, Daniell B. Hill, Shirish S. Barve – 27 May 2004

Yasuhiko Sugawara, Masatoshi Makuuchi – 20 May 2004 – In 1993, the Shinshu Group performed the first successful adult‐to‐adult living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). During the first 10 years of LDLT, many technical innovations have been reported. The major limitation of LDLT for adult recipients is the size of the graft. To overcome the problem, several graft types were designed, including left liver graft with caudate lobe, right liver, modified right liver, and right lateral sector and dual grafts.

20 May 2004

Kazuhiro Usui, Junzo Yamaguchi, Weili Gu, Takashi Kanematsu – 20 May 2004 – In previous studies, we showed that primed T cells were eliminated in long‐term survival Wistar Furth (WF) recipient rats with spontaneously accepted Lewis (LEW) liver graft and that the grafted liver lost the ability to elicit rejection reaction early after liver transplantation. We hypothesized that the same phenomenon may be observed in tolerant animals after immunosuppression in a rejector rat strain combination (WF→LEW).

Shin Hwang, Sung‐Gyu Lee, Se‐Jin Jang, Sung‐Hun Cho, Ki‐Hun Kim, Chul‐Soo Ahn, Deok‐Bog Moon, Tae‐Yong Ha – 20 May 2004 – Hepatic steatosis is often associated with overweight, so we tried body‐weight reduction in potential living donors with fatty liver and/or obesity to alleviate hepatic steatosis. We advised to reducing the body weight by 5% for 9 potential living donors showing hepatic steatosis of 25–95% on initial percutaneous needle biopsy (PCNB). They lost 5.9 ± 2.0% of the initial body weight during 2–6 months and their body mass index changed from 25.3 ± 3.8 to 23.7 ± 3.4.