[Cholestatic form of alcoholic liver damage]

Irregularly pronounced intralobular cholestasis was morphologically recorded from liver punctates of five chronic alcoholics on whom icterus of the obstructive type had been established by laboratory tests and clinical examinations. It was accompanied, in the portal fields, by conspicuous proliferation of small interlobular bile ducts with granulocytic inflammatory infiltrations adjacent to them. Neoplasia of connective tissue, causing irregular portal and periportal fibrosis along with formation of fibrotic septa, occurred in the region of proliferating ductules of patients with repetitive icterus fits or protracted jaundice. Fibroblasts as well as periportal cells of the fibroblast type which were interpreted as transformed perisinusoidal cells were ultrastructurally exhibited by the neoplastic connective tissue of the portal fields.