Evaluation of serum percent trisialotransferrin as potential predictive biomarker of hepatocellular dedifferentiation in chronic liver disease.

Background And Aim: Chronic hepatitis induced liver fibrogenesis is characterized by epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition of liver parenchymal cells (hepatocytes) to fibroblast (-like cells), i.e. increasing hepatocellular dedifferentiation, ultimatively leading to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

High prevalence of increased trisialotransferrin concentrations in patients with anorexia nervosa: implications for determination of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin.

Background: Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (asialo-+monosialo-+disialotransferrin, CDT) is currently the most specific laboratory marker of chronic alcohol abuse. We tested whether previous findings of false-positive CDT results for anorexia nervosa patients have been due to invalid CDT analysis methods or anorexia nervosa by itself.

Methods: Serum CDT from 49 anorexia nervosa patients, 14 bulimia nervosa patients and 22 healthy controls (all adolescent, female and age-matched) was determined in a retrospective study by HPLC (Clin-Rep-CDT-in-serum-online, cut-off > or =1.