Hepatic drug metabolism and adverse hepatic drug reactions

Drugs and other chemicals are usually metabolized in the liver in the drug-metabolizing enzyme system. The metabolites sometimes bind with cellular macromolecules and injure the cell directly or serve as new antigens to create immunologic injury in a delayed fashion. The immediate or toxic injury is dose-dependent, predictable and zonal in the liver lobule, usually in the central region. Carbon tetrachloride intoxication and acetaminophen overdose are examples of injury resulting from microsomal metabolism. Other injuries related to microsomal metabolism are those produced by vinyl chloride in polymerization plant workers and by methotrexate in psoriatics or leukemic children. Most adverse drug reactions affecting the liver and producing jaundice are unpredictable, delayed in onset, and only hypothetically related to microsomal metabolism in some instances. The two main types are cholestasis and viral-hepatitis-like. The former may be in a pure form, in which case it may be partly dose-dependent, or in a form mixed with hepatitis. Many drugs produce cholestasis in a small percentage of persons, and because the reaction is benign, albeit prolonged at times, such drugs continue to be used. The viral-hepatitis-like reaction involves few drugs and affects few persons, but can be fatal. The recognition that chronic hepatitis can be caused by drugs such as oxyphenisatin, alpha-methyldopa, and isoniazid has added a new dimension to the clinical problem of adverse drug reactions, which may extend to widely used and commonly available agents like aspirin.