Prevalence of intranuclear particles in liver pathologies

An ultrastructural study of the prevalence of electron dense 23-27 nm intranuclear particles was carried out on liver biopsies from patients with NANB chronic active hepatitis (CAH), Delta + CAH, HBsAg + CAH, nonviral liver pathologies and in one healthy volunteer. The particles were classified according to aggregation pattern and were found to be correlated with NANB CAH and Delta + CAH. No particles were observed in nonviral liver pathologies. A close antigenic relationship has been shown between the cytoplasmic alterations observed in NANB and delta hepatitis in chimpanzees. Our data indicate that there is a structural similarity between the intranuclear particles seen in both Delta and NANB hepatitis, thus reinforcing the hypothesis that the NANB and Delta agents are closely related.