Type III procollagen: Its use in the detection of hepatic fibrosis

✍ Scribed by Richard S. Aycock; Jerome M. Seyer

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 119 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.1840060236

✦ Synopsis

Galambos et al. (l)

, in making their opening comments concerning the usefulness of an assay for Type I11 procollagen N-terminal peptide, state that normal liver contains 5.5 mg of collagen per gm of which 80% is Type I collagen and 15% is Type I11 collagen. They further state that the endstage cirrhotic liver contains 30 mg of collagen per gm, of which 55% is Type I and 45% is Type 111, citing the work by Rojkind et al. ( 2). The implication is that this marked increase in Type I11 collagen will be reflected in serum levels of the N-terminal propeptide. We feel these figures were misquoted from Rojkind's paper. Normal livers in his paper contained an average of 37.5% Type I11 collagen, and the amount decreased to 30.2% in cirrhotic livers. These results are similar to but not as dramatic as the findings of Seyer et al. ( 3) who found that normal liver contained 45 to 49% Type I11 collagen and that this decreased to 18 to 34% Type I11 in cirrhosis. This decrease in percentage of Type I11 collagen has been recently confirmed by investigators in Japan (4). Thus, while the total amount of Type I11 collagen increases in cirrhotic livers, the ratio of Type I11 to Type I actually decreases. While this does not affect the overall outcome or the importance of this work, we feel that this misconception concerning the collagen composition of the liver should not be propagated.