Background: Hepatic Myelopathy (HM) is a rare complication of chronic liver disease usually associated with extensive portosystemic shunt of blood, which has been created surgically or has occurred spontaneously, causing progressive spastic paraparesis. Some single cases or short clinical reports describing patients suffering from HM have been published worldwide, but are often scattered. Mater...

Safety concerns associated with many drugs indicated for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can be attenuated by the early identification of toxicity through routine laboratory monitoring; however, a comprehensive review of the recommended monitoring guidelines for the different available RA therapies is currently unavailable. The aim of this review is to summarize the current guideline...

Four patients developed clinically important portal hypertension with histological features of idiopathic portal hypertension while they were receiving cytotoxic drugs for chronic myeloid leukaemia and Hodgkin's disease. Mild sclerosis of some small portal triads was the only abnormality seen at light microscopical examination in three of the four cases. In the remaining case light microscopica...

It is currently believed that melamine ingestion can lead to insoluble crystals in an animal's urinary system with subsequent physical obstruction or bladder carcinoma. However, whether melamine can cause injury of other tissues and organs in humans is yet unknown. In this study, we encountered 3 affected children with liver lesions, 2 males and 1 female, and detailed their clinical characteriz...

Recently, it is implicated that the abnormality of Akt signaling pathway is involved in the diabetic pathology. Previous studies have demonstrated that berberine could decrease blood glucose by elevating liver glycogen synthesis. However, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. In the present study, we investigated the effects of berberine on fasting blood glucose, liver glycogen, Akt, Glyco...

PURPOSE The purpose of our study was to evaluate the imaging findings of intrahepatic portosystemic venous shunts (IPSVS) in asymptomatic patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between 2002 and 2008, we examined 8 patients with IPSVS which were found incidentally. Diagnosis was based on ultrasonography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging findings. Three patients had a history of live...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of short non-coding RNAs, have been studied intensely and extensively in the past decade in every aspect of biological processes, including cell differentiation, proliferation and death. These findings pointed out the pivotal role of miRNA in posttranscriptional control of gene expression in animals and established miRNAs as therapeutic targets for different pathophy...

A 45-year-old Caucasian male presented with a two-week history of jaundice and right-upper quadrant (RUQ) abdominal pain. Transaminases and biliary enzymes were markedly elevated with hyperferritinemia and mildly elevated INR. Imaging tests showed no significant abnormality. He denied prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) medication use, but he had been taking at least 9 dietary supplements fo...

Fertile eggs were injected 10 or 20 mg/egg of aminoguanidine sulfate (AGS) into the albumen on the 5th day of incubation and examined macroscopically and histopathologically. The marked abnormalities were observed in liver, gallbladder and spleen while other organs were not different from the control. The earliest change was an increase of mitotic cells in the liver which reached to the peak at...