ABSTRACT
This paper reports on 464 cases of chronic hepatitis, of which 271 aggravated under the usual conservative treatment and thereafter were treated with an immunosuppressive agent. The results answer the question of "when an immunosuppressive therapy is justified". An improvement of liver diseases could be reached as follows: lupoid hepatitis 84%, chronic aggressive hepatitis with strong activity 78%, chronic aggressive hepatitis with low activity 53%, chronic persisting hepatitis 34%, mixed form of chronic aggressive hepatitis and primary biliary cirrhosis 34%, HBsAg-negative cirrhosis 57.9%, HBsAg-positive cirrhosis 60%, HBsAg-negative chronic aggressive hepatitis 66.7%, HbsAg-positive chronic aggressive hepatitis 76.2%.
Subject(s)
Immunosuppressive Agents/therapeutic use , Liver Diseases/drug therapy , Chronic Disease , Hepatitis/drug therapy , Humans , Liver Cirrhosis/drug therapy , Liver Diseases/immunologyABSTRACT
Sera from 137 patients with mitochondrial antibodies were tested against two different mitochondrial antigens. The mitochondrial antibodies from patients with pseudo-lupus erythematosus (PLE antigen) reacted exclusively with antigen which sedimented on moving-zone centrifugation at a density of 1.10, and contained no antigenic activity when tested against sera from patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). Purified PBC antigen had no PLE antigen activity at a density of 1.19, and all sera from patients with autoimmune liver disease fixed complement with this fraction. Sera from 54 of 55 patients with PLE reacted with the antigen of the PLE-gradient fraction. But 71 patients with liver disease had no such uniform reaction: sera from 39 patients fixed complement only with the PBC fraction, whereas 32 reacted stimultaneously with both the 1.10 and 1.19 density gradient fraction. The latter pattern was especially found in patients with chronic active hepatitis in whom antibodies to smooth muscle and nuclei were frequently detected.