Gonadal function in male patients with various liver disease has been evaluated by basal plasma testosterone level and a response of plasma testosterone to human chorionic gonadotropin. Compared with healthy male subjects of similar age, gonadal function was not reduced in chronic hepatitis, but in alcoholic liver disease without cirrhosis and in alcoholic and non-alcoholic cirrhosis. Gonadal d...

A 68 year-old-male with hepatitis C-positive liver cirrhosis was admitted because of liver abscess. After metronidazole was initiated against the infection, mental disturbance appeared. Hepatic encephalopathy was suspected at first, however, the brain MRI showed hyperintense lesion of the bilateral basal dendric nuclei which indicated metronidazole-associated encephalopathy. The symptoms became...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this subgroup analysis was to identify the risk factors associated with the development of various movement disorder phenotypes. METHODS Eighty-three non-Wilsonian cirrhotic patients with abnormal movements were allocated into the following groups: intention tremor, bradykinesia, Parkinsonism, and abnormal ocular movements. These movement types were considered the primary...

BACKGROUND Alcoholic hepatitis is associated with altered hepatic artery hemodynamics. Maddrey's discriminant function (MDF) can identify patients with poor prognosis (DF >32). We studied hepatic artery hemodynamic parameters of hepatic artery diameter (HAD), resistive index (RI) and pulsatility index (PI) in severe acute alcoholic hepatitis (SAAH) and for the presence of correlation of paramet...

Tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) is an essential cofactor in NO synthesis by endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) enzymes. It has been previously suggested that reduced intrahepatic BH4 results in a decrease in intrahepatic NO and contributes to increased hepatic vascular resistance and portal pressure in animal models of cirrhosis. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate the relationshi...

A study of mortality from hepatoma and hepatic cirrhosis was conducted in Taiwan, where their mortality rates are among the highest in the world in 1980 being 26.10 and 8.14 per 100,000 population for males and females, respectively, for hepatoma, and 33.01 and 12.90 for males and females, respectively, for cirrhosis. The secular trends of hepatoma and hepatic cirrhosis death rates have been in...

Relationship between cirrhosis and renal dysfunction is not yet fully understood. A model of cirrhosis with acute hepatic and renal damage (RF), produced by CCl4 in rats, with hemodynamic and renal functional alterations, similar to those observed in decompensated cirrhosis (DC) in man, was used to study chemical nephrotoxicity in animals. We performed in male Wistar rats hepatic and renal func...

An isolate of Fusarium verticillioides (MRC826) that induced experimental leukoencephalomalacia, also caused acute toxicity when fed to pigs and administered per rumen fistula to sheep. Pigs developed severe pulmonary oedema while sheep manifested severe nephrosis and hepatosis. A less toxic isolate (F. verticillioides MRC602), fed to baboons, resulted in acute congestive heart failure or hepat...

BACKGROUND Non-invasive methods for assessment of hepatic fibrosis are increasingly needed. Recent studies showed that combined elevation of tumor markers CA 19-9 and CA 125 is predictive of severe hepatic fibrosis or cirrhosis with high specificity. OBJECTIVES We aimed at developing a new panel of surrogate biomarkers for prediction of the stage of hepatic fibrosis by combining tumor markers...

Hepatic cirrhosis is the final spectrum of several aggressions to the liver, with great relevance to public healthcare. National data estimate a prevalence of 0.14% to 0.35%, mortality of 3 to 35 per 100,000 individuals and an annual average of 30,000 hospital admissions in Brazil.1,2 With the ageing population, the prevalence of chronic liver diseases, in particular steatohepatitis associated ...