Alcoholic hepatitis is a clinical picture that occurs when high amounts of alcohol are consumed in people who already have a regular consumption of it for a long time. It is an entity that in severe cases carries a very high mortality, in certain circumstances it reaches more than half of the cases in less than a month. At the present time the only therapy indicated in severe cases are corticosteroids with a moderate benefit and ballasted with potential side effects.
In many liver diseases, for reasons sometimes not well known, there is an alteration of iron metabolism. This disruption of iron parameters has proven useful as a prognostic marker in certain liver diseases. With this premise, iron alterations were evaluated in a large cohort of patients with alcoholic hepatitis, already classically known from the STHOPA study (PMID: 26176387), from the group of Prof. Mark Thursz of Imperial College London and other important leading groups alcoholic liver disease research, such as Philip Mathurin de Lille, Vijay Shah de Rochester. Transferrin values were correlated with the classic markers of the severity of alcoholic hepatitis (MELD, GASH, DF) and was an independent survival marker.
This work has a second mechanistic part that is now underway, with the aim of identifying new pathogenic pathways that allow the design of new more effective therapies.
This article arises from the stay made by Dr. Joaquín Cabezas at the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center with Dr. Ramón Bataller, thanks to a Juan Rodés Grant from the Spanish Association for the Study of the Liver (AEHH) in 2015. This work has allowed to maintain a line of research, which if not already, will soon allow Dr. Stephen Atkinson to enjoy a stay with Dr. Bataller in Pittsburg to continue the work and open new avenues of investigation.
Ref. Serum Transferrin Is an Independent Predictor of Mortality in Severe Alcoholic Hepatitis. Atkinson, Stephen R. MD1; Hamesch, Karim MD2; Spivak, Igor MD2; Guldiken, Nurdan PhD2; Cabezas, Joaquín MD3,4,5; Argemi, Josepmaria MD, PhD6; Theurl, Igor MD7; Zoller, Heinz MD8; Cao, Sheng MD9; Mathurin, Philippe MD10; Shah, Vijay H. MD9; Trautwein, Christian MD2; Bataller, Ramon MD3,6; Thursz, Mark R. MD1; Strnad, Pavel MD2Author Information. The American Journal of Gastroenterology: January 24, 2020 – Volume Publish Ahead of Print – Issue – doi: 10.14309/ajg.0000000000000492
