[Ultrastructural findings in piecemeal necrosis in mildly active chronic hepatitis]

Ultrastructural and immunohistochemical investigation of hepatic tissue samples from 10 patients with mildly active chronic hepatitis (3 of them type B) showed round cell infiltration with prevailing T lymphocytes, sparse macrophages and solitary plasmacytes in marginal sections of piecemeal necroses. Hepatocytes were destroyed by apoptosis and relatively quickly enguefed into macrophages. A lytic destruction or a bigger admixture of polymorphs were not proved. Later, a withdrawal of lymphocytic infiltration and disappearance of plasmacytes occurred. Pseudoductuli spread into piecemeal necroses along capillarized sinusoids and granulation tissue grew from portobiliary fields. A sort of fibroblasts and myofibroblasts occurred during healing. Some of them comprising small lipidic vacuoles may have represented transformed perisinusoidal (Ito) cells.