Analysis of IL-10, IL-4 and TNF-alpha polymorphisms in drug-induced liver injury (DILI) and its outcome.

Background/aims: The aim of this study was to assess whether genetic polymorphism of three important candidate cytokine genes, IL-10 (-1082G/A, -819C/T, and -592C/A), IL-4 (-590C/T) and TNF-alpha (-308G/A), play a role in the susceptibility to developing drug-induced liver injury (DILI), and in determining its phenotypic expression and severity.

Methods: Cytokine genotyping was analysed using TaqMan 5' allelic discrimination assay in 140 DILI patients (mean age 51 y, range 13-82, with equal sex distribution) included in the Spanish Registry and 268 healthy controls.

Results: Genotypes, haplotypes and allele frequencies were similar for both cases and controls.

Optical analysis of computed tomography images of the liver predicts fibrosis stage and distribution in chronic hepatitis C.

Unlabelled: This study was undertaken to evaluate an image processing method for assessing liver fibrosis in conventional computed tomography (CT) scans in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Two cohorts (designated "estimation," n = 34; and "validation," n = 107) of chronic hepatitis C patients were assessed using digitized conventional helical CT. Weighted CT mean fibrosis (Fibro-CT) was calculated as a nonlinear weighted mean F-score for each sample.