1991 Volume 41 Issue 1 Pages 81-90
An immunofluorescence study using unfixed cryostat sections of rat pituitary glands was carried out on sera from 83 patients with various liver diseases [5 acute viral hepatitis, 28 chronic hepatitis, 18 liver cirrhosis, 5 hepatocellular carcinoma, 4 alcoholic hepatic fibrosis, 2 fatty liver, 1 drug-induced liver injury, 5 autoimmune hepatitis, 15 primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC)] and 10 healthy subjects.. After absorption of sera with rat liver tissues, anterior pituitary cell antibodies (PCA) were found in none of the healthy subjects, 6 of 15 patients with PBC (40.0%), 1 of 5 patients with autoimmune hepatitis (20.0%), 1 of 5 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and 3 of 18 patients with liver cirrhosis (16.7%).
The prevalence of PCA was highest in patients with PBC compared with other liver diseases, but PCA were detected only in the sera of patients with chronic non-suppurative destructive cholangitis (5 of 6 patients, 83.3%) or granuloma (5 of 8 patients, 62.5%) in biopsied liver tissues, not in the sera of patients without these lesions. PCA were considered to have a close association with the initiation of PBC.
