Clinical usefulness of serum cholylglycine determination in various liver diseases

In order to study the clinical significance of cholylglycine (CG), CG in both fasting levels and after oral loading of 300 mg ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) were determined by radioimmunoassay in 313 patients with various liver diseases. Elevated fasting CG levels were found in 66.6% of patients with acute hepatitis (AH), 34.8% chronic inactive hepatitis (CIH), 79.3% chronic active hepatitis (CAH), 97.1% liver cirrhosis (LC), 94.7% hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and 80% of gall stones (GS). Changes of fasting CG during the course of AH were found to be parallel with values of transaminases. On oral loading of UDCA, different CG responses were found in CIH and CAH, and in compensated and decompensated LC. From these results we concluded that the determinations of serum CG gave additional informations of various liver diseases.