Yuen Gao, Jinyan Feng, Guang Yang, Shuqin Zhang, Yunxia Liu, Yanan Bu, Mingming Sun, Man Zhao, Fuquan Chen, Weiying Zhang, Lihong Ye, Xiaodong Zhang – 13 June 2017 – Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a leading cause in the occurrence of hepatitis B, liver cirrhosis, and liver cancer, in which nuclear HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), the genomic form that templates viral transcription and sustains viral persistence, plays crucial roles.

Domenico Alvaro – 12 June 2017

Manisha Balwani, Bruce Wang, Karl E. Anderson, Joseph R. Bloomer, D. Montgomery Bissell, Herbert L. Bonkovsky, John D. Phillips, Robert J. Desnick, for the Porphyrias Consortium of the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network – 12 June 2017 – The acute hepatic porphyrias are a group of four inherited disorders, each resulting from a deficiency in the activity of a specific enzyme in the heme biosynthetic pathway. These disorders present clinically with acute neurovisceral symptoms which may be sporadic or recurrent and, when severe, can be life‐threatening.

Lingxi Jiang, Qian Yan, Shuo Fang, Ming Liu, Yan Li, Yun‐Fei Yuan, Yan Li, Yinghui Zhu, Jiali Qi, Xiaodong Yang, Dora Lai Wan Kwong, Xin‐Yuan Guan – 12 June 2017 – Calcium‐binding protein (CAB39) is a key regulator of a group of sterile 20 kinases. Here, we report that CAB39 was frequently up‐regulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which was significantly associated with tumor metastasis (P = 0.000), poorer disease‐free survival rate (P = 0.027), and poor prognosis (P = 0.000).

Manisha Balwani, Bruce Wang, Karl E. Anderson, Joseph R. Bloomer, D. Montgomery Bissell, Herbert L. Bonkovsky, John D. Phillips, Robert J. Desnick, for the Porphyrias Consortium of the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network – 12 June 2017 – The acute hepatic porphyrias are a group of four inherited disorders, each resulting from a deficiency in the activity of a specific enzyme in the heme biosynthetic pathway. These disorders present clinically with acute neurovisceral symptoms which may be sporadic or recurrent and, when severe, can be life‐threatening.

Eleanor J. Taylor, Rebecca L. Jones, J. Ashley Guthrie, Ian A. Rowe – 12 June 2017 – Surveillance by ultrasonography for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) for individuals with cirrhosis is recommended. There is debate regarding the effectiveness of surveillance in reducing mortality, and there is little information on the harms available to patients considering surveillance. The aim of this study was to provide estimates of both the benefit and harms of surveillance.

9 June 2017

Tae‐Young Choi, Mehwish Khaliq, Shinya Tsurusaki, Nikolay Ninov, Didier Y.R. Stainier, Minoru Tanaka, Donghun Shin – 9 June 2017 – Upon mild liver injury, new hepatocytes originate from preexisting hepatocytes. However, if hepatocyte proliferation is impaired, a manifestation of severe liver injury, biliary epithelial cells (BECs) contribute to new hepatocytes through BEC dedifferentiation into liver progenitor cells (LPCs), also termed oval cells or hepatoblast‐like cells (HB‐LCs), and subsequent differentiation into hepatocytes.

Rodrigo Liberal, Charlotte R. Grant, Muhammed Yuksel, Jonathon Graham, Alireza Kalbasi, Yun Ma, Michael A.

Chuanfen Zheng, Hui Zeng, Hui Lin, Jia Wang, Xiaobin Feng, Zhiqun Qiu, Ji‐an Chen, Jiaohua Luo, Yang Luo, Yujing Huang, Lingqiao Wang, Wenyi Liu, Yao Tan, Anwei Xu, Yuan Yao, Weiqun Shu – 9 June 2017 – Microcystins have been reported to be carcinogenic by animal and cell experimentation, but there are no data on the linkage between serum microcystins and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) risk in humans.