[Immunosuppressive treatment of chronic active hepatitis (author's transl)]

Early-stage chronic active hepatitis treated with prednisolone and azathioprine has a good prognosis. In most of the 20 patients investigated improvement occurred already after 3 months of treatment, by 6 to 9 months the laboratory findings had become normal and after 12 months there was no definite evidence histologically for the initial aggressive form of liver disease. However, in the late stage of chronic active hepatitis the effect of immunosuppressive treatment seems questionable. The tendency for improvement of laboratory findings during immunosuppression was significantly worse than in early-stage disease. Histologically there was no real improvement in two thirds of the cases a year after onset of treatment.