The P53 “knockout”: Gone but not forgotten

✍ Scribed by David Carbone

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 427 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.1840160439

✦ Synopsis

Buckground. Controlled trials have yielded inconsistent results with regard to the efficacy of corticosteroids in the treatment of alcoholic hepatitis. Three meta-analyses suggest that they may be effective in patients with encephalopathy who have severe liver disease. Methods. We conducted a randomized, double-blind trial comparing 28 days of prednisolone treatment (40 mg per day) with placebo in 61 patients with biopsyproved alcoholic hepatitis and either spontaneous hepatic encephalopathy (n = 19) or a discriminantfunction value higher than 32. The discriminant function used was as follows: 4.6 (prothrombin timecontrol time [in seconds]) + serum bilirubin (in micromoles per liter)/l7. Fifty-seven of the patients had evidence of cirrhosis on biopsy. The primary end point was death within two months.