Normal liver stiffness and its determinants in healthy blood donors.

Background: Several studies in healthy populations have investigated normal liver stiffness on transient elastography, but none has excluded subjects with fatty liver.

Aims: To define normal liver stiffness and its determinants in 923 healthy voluntary blood donors with and without fatty liver.

Methods: Seven hundred and forty six subjects were analyzed with transient elastography according to the absence (602) or presence of fatty liver (144) at ultrasonography.

Low-dose tenofovir is more potent than adefovir and is effective in controlling HBV viremia in chronic HBeAg-negative hepatitis B.

Aim: To study the efficacy of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) at low dose in a small open trial of chronic hepatitis B patients with advanced stage disease.

Methods: Eleven patients were treated with TDF 75 mg for a median period of 80 (range, 24-576) wk and then 7 cases were shifted to an adefovir 10 mg treatment group. All patients had been pre-treated with lamivudine: 5 had YMDD resistant mutants and 6 wild-type virus.