[Cyclosporin A in chronic active hepatitis. Results of a pilot study of 20 patients]

In 20 patients suffering from advanced chronic active hepatitis, type B or NANB, the therapeutic effect of cyclosporin A was studied. 15 of these patients already showed cirrhotic transformations and partial liver dysfunctions. In 15 cases an unsuccessful pretreatment with glucocorticoids and/or azathioprine had been performed. Only 3 patients showed an improvement of biochemical and morphological findings under treatment with cyclosporin. In spite of complete normalisation of the biochemical data in another case the morphologic aspects of a liver biopsy remained unchanged. Except for one case of obvious hepatoxicity no serious side effects of cyclosporin were observed under a therapeutic blood concentration between 200 and 400 ng/ml. From our observations we conclude that cyclosporin only in rare cases of advanced chronic active hepatitis may be promising. Furthermore we could not detect any particular criteria for predicting a response to cyclosporin in advance.