Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth most common cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Hepatocellular carcinoma commonly metastasizes to lungs, lymph nodes, and bone. Although HCC usually occurs in setting of chronic liver disease due to alcoholism or HBV/HCV infection, the incidence of HCC arising from nonalcoholic steatohepatitis is increasing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol Clin Exp Res
August 2015
Background: Many alcoholics and heavy drinkers undergo repeated cycles of alcohol abstinence followed by relapse to alcohol drinking; a pattern that contributes to escalated alcohol intake over time. In rodents, alcohol drinking that is interspersed with periods of alcohol deprivation (imposed abstinence) increases alcohol intake during reaccess to alcohol. This is termed the "alcohol deprivation effect" or "ADE" and is a model of alcohol relapse in humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Naltrexone (NTX) is underutilized in clinical treatment settings because its efficacy is modest, and it is not effective for all alcoholics and, when it is effective, a significant number of alcoholics fail to maintain initial treatment gains and subsequently relapse to heavy drinking. This has slowed acceptance of NTX by the treatment community, and there is a clear need for additional treatments for alcoholism and alcohol use disorders. Given that NTX and prazosin can each reduce alcohol drinking in rats selectively bred for alcohol preference and high voluntary alcohol drinking (alcohol-preferring "P" rats), we tested whether a combination of NTX + prazosin is more effective in decreasing alcohol drinking than is either drug alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study examined whether prazosin reduces alcohol drinking over the course of prolonged treatment and whether it blocks the initiation of alcohol drinking in rats with a genetic predisposition toward high alcohol drinking, that is alcohol-preferring (P) rats.
Methods: In study one, alcohol-experienced P rats that had been drinking alcohol for 2 h/d for several months were treated daily with prazosin (0, 0.5, 1.