A fermented mixed tea made with camellia (Camellia japonica) and third-crop green tea leaves prevents nonalcoholic steatohepatitis in Sprague-Dawley rats fed a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet.

Background: Established treatments for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are few, thus it is imperative to develop novel dietary strategies that can prevent NASH. A fermented mixed tea (FMT) made with Camellia japonica (Japanese camellia) and third- crop green tea leaves by tea-rolling processing was reported to reduce body weight and adipose tissue weight in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Because visceral fat is one of the most important factors for the development of hepatic steatosis, this FMT supplementation can be a candidate dietary strategy for the prevention of NASH.

Elevated serum interleukin-6 levels in patients with pancreatic cancer.

The vast majority of pancreatic cancer patients have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis and they eventually become so emaciated that death primarily occurs from cancer cachexia. Cancer cachexia may be mediated by certain cytokines such as interleukin-6. In this study, we measured serum interleukin-6 levels in 55 patients with histologically proven pancreatic cancer and investigated their relationships to the clinical status of pancreatic cancer.

Evidence for increased somatic cell mutations in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

The measurement of somatic cell mutation may assist in the assessment of human cancer risk. The glycophorin A (GPA) assay, which measures the frequency of variant erythrocytes in persons with blood type MN, was used to directly assess in vivo mutability in 30 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCC patients showed significantly increased frequencies of both hemizygous (MO) and homozygous (MM) variants, due to somatic loss of expression of the N allele, when compared with 27 patients with chronic liver disease and 21 healthy controls.

Effect of heavy alcohol intake on long-term results after curative resection of hepatitis C virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma.

We studied the effect of heavy alcohol intake (ethanol intake > or = 80 g/day for > or = 5 yr) on long-term results in 53 patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who had undergone curative hepatic resection. Cell proliferative activity in the tumor and non-tumorous liver was also assessed by counting argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region-associated proteins (Ag-NOR) in the resected specimens. Twenty patients (20 males, 0 females) were positive for heavy alcohol intake [AI(+)] and 33 (28 males, 5 females) were not [AI(-)].

Intratumoral DNA heterogeneity of small hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background: Intratumoral DNA heterogeneity provides important information regarding biologic and clinical behavior. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence of DNA heterogeneity in small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) nodules.

Methods: The DNA content of 28 surgically resected small HCC nodules (< or = 3.