Advanced portal hypertension accompanying end-stage liver disease results in an altered milieu due to inadequate detoxification of blood from splanchnic circulation by the failing liver. The portosystemic shunts with hepatic dysfunction result in an increased absorption and impaired neutralisation of the gastrointestinal bacteria and endotoxins leads to altered homeostasis with multiorgan dysfu...

Background Liver cirrhosis has been shown to affect cardiac performance. However cardiac dysfunction may only be revealed under stress conditions. The value of non-invasive stress tests in diagnosing cirrhotic cardiomyopathy is unclear since their ability to detect abnormalities has been inconsistent using different imaging modalities. We sought to investigate the response to pharmacological st...

Nitric oxide (NO) has diverse physiological and pathophysiological effects. The roles of NO in the renal and cardiac dysfunction found in cirrhosis are reviewed. In the kidneys of experimental animals with cirrhosis, several lines of evidence speak in favour of an enhanced production of NO, through the activation of both endothelial constitutive and inducible isoforms of NO synthase. In contras...

Background: Although the term cirrhotic cardiomyopathy expresses cardiac changes associating liver cirrhosis unrelated to its aetiology, hepatitis C virus HCV was suggested to play a role in cardiomyopathy and/or myocarditis. However the existence of such direct viral effect on the heart in HCV induced liver cirrhosis LC patients remains to be verified. Rationale of the current study was to fig...