Liver Fibrosis in Alcoholics
Detection by Fab Radioimmunoassay of Serum Procollagen III Peptides
- Shinkichi Sato, MD;
- Toshihiko Nouchi, MD;
- Theresa M. Worner, MD;
- Charles S. Lieber, MD
- From the Section of Liver Disease and Nutrition and the Alcohol Research and Treatment Center, Bronx (NY) Veterans Administration Medical Center (Drs Sato, Nouchi, Worner, and Lieber); and the Departments of Medicine (Drs Sato, Nouchi, Worner, and Lieber) and Pathology (Dr Lieber), Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. Dr Sato is now with the Department of Pathology, Tokai University School of Medicine, Kanagawa, Japan
Abstract
Radioimmunoassays were used to measure serum levels of laminin and of procollagen III peptides, both with the intact antibody and with the Fab fragments, within one week of alcohol withdrawal in 83 alcoholics admitted for detoxification and/or treatment of concomitant medical problems. All patients underwent a diagnostic liver biopsy, which revealed simple fatty liver in 22, perivenular fibrosis in 20, septal fibrosis in 21, and cirrhosis in 20. Although all three serum measurements correlated significantly with the degree of fibrosis, only the Fab radioimmunoassay of procollagen III peptides discriminated between simple fatty liver and perivenular fibrosis in a significant number of subjects.
(JAMA 1986;256:1471-1473)
Footnotes
-
Reprint requests to Alcohol Research and Treatment Center, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Bronx, NY 10468 (Dr Lieber).
