Liver disease and alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency.

Discovery of AAT deficiency by Laurell and Eriksson in 1963 [2] provided a foundation for current thinking about the pathogenesis of pulmonary emphysema [3,4]. Although AAT deficiency has become one of the best understood genetic disorders at a molecular and protein level, many questions about the clinical disease remain unanswered. Current American and International research projects should provide answers to some of these questions in the future.