Inmaculada Azorín, María‐Dolores Miñana, Vicente Felipo, Santiago Grisolía – 1 September 1989 – Rats were fed a standard diet or the standard diet supplemented with ammonium acetate (20% w/w) for up to 100 days. The effect of the ingestion of the high‐ammonium diet on some aspects of nitrogen metabolism in rats was studied. Ammonia levels in blood increased ≈3‐fold; in brain, liver and muscle the increases were 36, 34 and 50%, respectively. Urea levels in blood and urea excretion increased ≈2‐fold. There was no increase of carbamyl phosphate synthase.

Herbert L. Bonkovsky – 1 September 1989 – Effects of iron were studied in cultured chick embryo liver cells to help elucidate the effect of hepatic iron in the human disease porphyria cutanea tarda and in toxic porphyria caused by chemicals.

Jules L. Dienstag – 1 September 1989

Sheila Sherlock – 1 September 1989 – Nailfold capillary microscopical and hormonal investigations were carried out in 25 patients with cirrhosis of the liver and in 20 age‐ and sex‐matched controls. Several structural and functional capillary microscopical parameters were significantly different between the group of cirrhotics as a whole and the controls; no capillaroscopic feature helped to distinguish cirrhotics with spiders from those without.

Bernd Möller, Uwe Hopf, Roman Stemerowicz, Günther Henze, Hans Gelderblom – 1 August 1989 – Circulating immune complexes composed of HBcAg and anti‐HBc have been demonstrated recently in patients with hepatitis B virus replication. After dissociation of immune complexes by chaotropic ions, HBcAg was quantified radioimmunologically. In the present study, we describe 10 patients with hepatitis B virus replication, absent or delayed anti‐HBc formation and exposed HBcAg in serum. Four of the 10 patients had acute hepatitis, and six patients had chronic persistent hepatitis.

Anna Lok – 1 August 1989 – The aetiology of sporadic acute hepatitis in Taiwan was studied in a consecutive series of 273 patients, 209 males and 64 females, aged from < 1 to 73 years. Only eight patients (2.9%) had acute hepatitis A, 36 (13.2%) acute hepatitis B and 57 (20.9%) had acute non‐A, non‐B hepatitis (NANB). The remaining 172 patients (63.0%) were HBsAg positive but antiHBc IgM negative and were classified as acute hepatitis in chronic HBsAg carriers.

S. W. Hosking – 1 August 1989 – Mosaic pattern of gastric mucosa has been reported to be a sensitive and specific criterion for the diagnosis of portal hypertension and an important marker of nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding. So that the validity of this endoscopic sign could be assessed, 136 patients with portal hypertension, 25 chronic alcoholics without portal hypertension, and 366 controls were carefully endoscoped. Mosaic pattern was significantly (p < 0.01) more common in portal hypertension patients (7.4%) than in controls (1.4%). It was not seen in chronic alcoholics.

Daniel Urbain, Hamphrey R. Ham, Agesilao D'Arienzo, Gabriele Mazzacca – 1 August 1989

1 August 1989

Jaap J. Beutler, Hein A. Koomans, Ton J. Rabelink, Carlo A. Gaillard, Jan van Hattum, Peter Boer, Evert J. Dorhout Mees – 1 August 1989 – We compared the natriuretic response to a standard dose of atrial natriuretic factor in nine patients with early cirrhosis (no ascites or edema) with the response in normal subjects displaying a range of baseline sodium excretions due to different sodium intakes (20 mmoles per day, n = 9; 100 mmoles per day, n = 9, and 200 mmoles per day, n = 9).