Gastroenterology
Chapters
« previous | page 2 of 3 pages | next »In Vitro Systems for the Study of the Intrahepatic Biliary Epithelium
Ruth Joplin, Shahnaz Gill, Sarah Ward and Stivelia Kachilele
The intrahepatic biliary epithelium is a simple epithelium (each cell is in contact with a basement membrane) that until relatively recently was thought to function solely as an inert lining to the biliary ductular system. Improved methods to allow adequate purification and maintenance of viable ...
Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy
Paul A. Dawson and Girish Mishra
Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), also known as obstetric cholestasis, is one of the most common causes of liver disease in pregnancy. ICP is a reversible form of cholestasis that usually develops in the third trimester of pregnancy and is associated with itching, elevated serum l...
Liver Disease in Cystic Fibrosis
Carla Colombo, Pier Maria Battezzati, Clara Fredella and Andrea Crosignani
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a multi-organ genetic disorder of the Caucasian population, af fecting between 1 in 2000 and 1 in 4500 newborns in different ethnic groups. Progres sive pulmonary disease limits survival and quality of life of most patients with CF. When the disease was first described in...
Liver Transplantation for Adult Vanishing Bile Duct Syndromes
Mario Angelico
Liver transplantation (LTx) is nowadays an established treatment which has revolution ized the care of patients with end-stage chronic liver diseases. Thousands of patients with a life expectancy of few months to few years have the opportunity to extend their survival with adequate quality of l...
Medical Treatment of Vanishing Bile Duct Syndrome in Adults
C. Squarcia Giussani, Andrea Crosignani and Mauro Podda
Medical management of vanishing bile duct syndrome (VBDS) should be aimed at treating both the underlying disease and symptoms or complications of long-standing cholestasis. For the treatment of pruritus, the most specific symptom of VBDS, anion exchange resins represent the first-line therapy an...
Mouse Knockout Models of Biliary Epithelial Cell Formation and Disease
Lopa Mishra
Liver and biliary tree formation involves the systematic expression of key transcriptional activators and signaling molecules by the endoderm as well as surrounding mesoderm. Control of early hepatic growth, the coordination of bile epithelial cell and hepatocyte differentiation that is necess...
Negative Interactions with the Microbiota: IBD
Charles L. Bevins and Nita H. Salzman
Mucosal surfaces are colonized by a complex microbiota that provides beneficial functions under normal physiological conditions, but is capable of contributing to chronic inflammatory disease in susceptible individuals. Of the mucosal tissues, the mammalian intestine harbors an especially high numbe...
Nerve Regulation of Cholangiocyte Functions
Barbara Barbaro, Shannon Glaser, Heather Francis, Silvia Taffetani, Marco Marzion, Gene LeSage and Gianfranco Alpini
Cholangiocytes are epithelial cells that line the intrahepatic biliary tree, a three-dimensional network of interconnecting ducts of different sizes and functions. The objectives of this chapter are to review the recent findings related to the role of nerves in the regulation of cholangiocyte ...
Normal and Abnormal Development of the Biliary Tree
James M. Crawford
The liver primordium buds off the ventral aspect of the embryonic foregut very early during development of the abdominal organs, at about 18 days of gestation. By week 16, the architectural organization of the hepatic parenchyma and vasculature is well-established, and the extrahepatic biliary tr...
Overview of Gut Immunology
Katie Lynn Mason, Gary B. Huffnagle, Mairi C. Noverr and John Y. Kao
The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract) plays dual roles in human physiology: digestion and uptake of nutrients and the more daunting task of maintaining immune homeostasis (protecting the body from potentially harmful microbes, while inducing tolerogenic responses to innocuous food, commensals and se...
Overview of the Gastrointestinal Microbiota
Vincent B. Young and Thomas M. Schmidt
The community of microbes that inhabits the mammalian intestinal tract exists in a symbiosis with their host. The structure of this community represents the combined effects of selection pressure on the part of the host and on the part of the microbes themselves. Through recent advances in the field...
Participation of Cytokines and Growth Factors in Biliary Epithelial Proliferation and Mito-inhibition During Ductular Reactions
A.J. Demetris, J.G. Lunz III, V. Subbotin, T. Wu, I. Nozaki, S. Contrucci and X. Yin
Hepatic reactions to injury are an attempt to maintain functionality and regain homeo stasis while adapting to a change in the liver environment. Most reactions involve proliferation and apoptosis of hepatocytes, biliary epithelial cells (BEC), and stromal, hematolymphoid, and endothelial cells...
Pathology of the Intrahepatic Biliary Tree After Liver Transplantation
James Neuberger and Rebecca Harrison
The human liver allograft is subject to a multitude of insults: ischaemia, reperfusion injury, acute and chronic rejection, infection (viral, bacterial and fungal), drug toxicity, outflow obstruction and recurrent disease. In the majority of these situations, the epithelial cells of the intra-...
Positive Interactions with the Microbiota: Probiotics
Marko Kalliomäki, Seppo Salminen and Erika Isolauri
Rigorous research in the field of probiotics is a fairly new phenomenon although first reports about beneficial effects of specific gut bacteria on human health originated already a century ago. A prerequisite for such a scrutiny has been a definition of criteria for probiotics. Recently, novel mole...
Preeclamptic Liver Disease and HELLP Syndrome
Gretchen Koontz, Jamal Ibdah, and David C. Merrill
Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy remain a devastating disease for both the mother and the fetus. Preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome, two disorders specific to pregnancy, remain a major cause of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity worldwide. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is not alway...
Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Bench to Bedside
Shinji Shimoda, Akiyoshi Nishio, Hiromi Ishibashi and M. Eric Gershwin
Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is an autoimmune liver disease that predominantly affects women and characterized by chronic progressive destruction of small intrahepatic bile ducts with portal inflammation and subsequent fibrosis. The serologic hallmark of PBC is the presence of antimitochond...
Purinergic Regulation of Bile Ductular Secretion
Jonathan A. Dranoff
The concept of extracellular nucleotides as regulatory molecules is not new; Burnstock first advanced it in the 1950’s.1-3 However, this idea did not gain widespread accep tance until distinct nucleotide receptors were first identified in the 1970’s and cloned in the 1980’s and beyond. As a gro...
Regulation of Secretion in Human Gallbladder Epithelial Cells
Chantal Housset, Nicolas Chignard, Laura Fouassier and Annick Paul
The gallbladder stores and concentrates bile between meals. Fluid secretion prevents the stagnation of bile salts after feeding, while mucins secreted in the gallbladder ensure cytoprotection. Mucin secretion in human gallbladder is stimulated predominantly by Ca2+dependent pa...
Spectrum of Maternal Liver Disease
R. Sidney G. Smith and Jamal A. Ibdah
There is a broad range of liver diseases that can occur during the course of pregnancy, including disease states which are specific to pregnancy and those which occur coincidentally with pregnancy. This chapter provides a brief overview of liver diseases unique to pregnancy, all of which are disc...
The Commensal Microbiology of the Gastrointestinal Tract
Janet M. Manson, Marcus Rauch and Michael S. Gilmore
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a dynamic environment and therefore the stability of the commensal community, or microbiota, is under constant challenge. Microscopic observations have revealed that the majority of bacteria present in the GI tract are not detected using standard culturing techniqu...
The Damage‑Response Framework of Microbial Pathogenesis and Infectious Diseases
Liise-anne Pirofski and Arturo Casadevall
Historical and most currently held views of microbial pathogenesis and virulence are plagued by confusing and imprecise terminology and definitions that require revision and exceptions to accommodate new basic science and clinical information about microbes and infectious diseases. These views are a...
The Liver in Normal Pregnancy
Yannick Bacq
Changes in value of certain serum liver function tests occur during normal pregnancy and an understanding of these physiological changes is necessary for the management of liver diseases. Because of the phenomenon of hemodilution, the albumin level decreases as early as the first trimester. Serum...
The “Microflora Hypothesis” of Allergic Disease
Andrew Shreiner, Gary B. Huffnagle and Mairi C. Noverr
Predisposition to allergic disease is a complex function of an individual’s genetic background and, as is the case with multi‑gene traits, environmental factors have important phenotypic consequences. Over a span of decades, a dramatic increase in the prevalence of allergic disease in westerni...
Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of the Rat Intrahepatic Biliary Tree: Physiological Implications
Tatyana V Masyuk, Anatoliy I Masyuk, Erik L Ritman
The intrahepatic biliary tree is a major target of a diverse group of hepatobiliary diseases, the cholangiopathies, which preferentially involve specific anatomical portions or segments of the bile ducts. Microscopic computed tomography (micro-CT) is a novel technique that allows reconst...
Ultrastructural Analysis of the Intrahepatic Bile Duct System
L. Marucci, A.M. Jezequel and A. Benedetti
Much has been learned in the past few years concerning morphology and function of the intrahepatic biliary epithelium. Immunohistochemistry, together with ultrastruc tural studies has allowed a better identification of the smallest branches of the biliary tree and of subcellular components (cyt...
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