Colchicine treatment effects on liver cirrhosis assessed by liver blood flow measurements

Hepatic fibrosis is common in all chronic liver diseases. This fibrosis induces morphological, functional and hemodynamic changes. Among the antifibrotic drugs, colchicine gave the most encouraging results. In a group of 22 patients with liver cirrhosis, the hemodynamic changes were studied before and after 24 months of antifibrotic treatment with colchicine (1 mg daily, 5 days a week). The liver blood flow (LBF) was estimated every year by a noninvasive radioisotopic method. After colchicine therapy the determinations showed, an obvious improvement of the liver blood flow with an increase of K (from 0.159 to 0.1678) (p less than 0.001) and a per cent decrease of delta from 44 to 32 (p less than 0.001), thus showing an improvement of the liver blood supply. The simultaneous and favourable changes of the liver biochemical tests and of the sinusoidal hemodynamic parameters strongly suggest that the perfusion improvement, induced by a loss of liver collagen, might explain the tendency of the biochemical data to resume normal values.