BACKGROUND Autoimmune Hepatitis is a chronic liver disease which affects young people and can result in liver failure leading to death or transplantation yet there is a lack of information on the incidence and prevalence of this disease and its natural history in the UK. A means of obtaining this information is via the use of clinical databases formed of electronic primary care records. How rel...

N Engl J Med 2006;354:54-66. Copyright © 2006 Massachusetts Medical Society. A utoimmune hepatitis is a generally progressive, chronic hepatitis of unknown cause that occurs in children and adults of all ages. Occasionally, it has a fluctuating course, with periods of increased or decreased activity. The diagnosis is based on histologic abnormalities, characteristic clinical and biochemical fin...

background: autoimmune hepatitis (aih) in childhood has variable modes of presentation, and the disease should be suspected and excluded in all children presenting with symptoms and signs of prolonged or severe acute liver disease. in aih, the liver biopsy histopathology shows inflammation in addition to presence of serum autoimmune antibodies and increased levels of immunoglobulin g (igg). obj...

Liver biopsy (LB) remains a major tool in chronic liver disease evaluation. Main current indications of LB in chronic liver disease are reviewed in this manuscript. Major development of non-invasive tools for evaluation of liver fibrosis led to decrease of LB indications in patients with chronic hepatitis C. LB is the only tool for exploration of necroinflammatory and fibrosis lesions in chroni...

Primary Biliary Cirrhosis (PBC) is the result of long-standing damage to intra-hepatic biliary channels as a result of immune mechanisms leading to cholestasis and its associated complications. It can end up in chronic liver disease or cirrhosis. It usually manifests as pruritis that then proceeds to fatigue, jaundice and other features of chronic liver disease. It is detected by raised serolog...

Objective: To evaluate the liver biopsies of patients with chronic viral hepatitis and autoimmune hepatitis based on age, gender, clinical features with staging and grading of disease. Material and Methods: This descriptive study was conducted through case series and all patients who were positive for HBsAg or HCV Ab or autoimmune hepatitis, had liver biopsies and were assessed for staging and ...

In both autoimmune liver disease and chronic viral hepatitis, the injury results from an immune-mediated cytotoxic T cell response to liver cells. As such, it is not surprising that CD4(+) regulatory T cells, a key regulatory population of T cells able to curb immune responses, could be involved in both autoimmune hepatitis and chronic viral hepatitis. The liver can induce the conversion of naï...

We report a rare case of severe autoimmune hemolytic anemia triggered by pegylated interferon during combination therapy for chronic HCV. This case demonstrated that interferon can de novo induce autoimmune hemolytic anemia during therapy for chronic hepatitis C in a previously healthy patient.