[Electron microscopic study of alcoholic liver damage, with special reference to changes in the mesenchymal liver...

Needle-hepatic biopsy of 48 chronic alcoholic patients was investigated by the aid of electron microscopy. On the base of clinical and histological features five stages of the hepatic lesion could be distinguished: 1. fatty liver, 2. fatty liver with increasing activity of the mesenchymal cells, 3. acute alcoholic hepatitis ,4. chronic alcoholic hepatitis, 5. alcoholic cirrhosis. Changes of the liver cell organella and mesenchymal cells in different stages were compared. It was observed, that the damage to the hepatocytes--exept acute alcoholic hepatitis--was not parallel to the severity of the clinical picture. On the other hand proliferation of mesenchymal cells their secretory activity and fibrogenesis seem to go parallely with the progression of the hepatic lesion. Authors assume, that between alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis there exists an intermedier form of the disease i.e. the chronic agressive alcoholic hepatitis ,which morphologically is similar to the chronic agressive hepatitis. This form of the hepatic lesion can be characterized not by the severity of the lesion of hepatocytes, but the by enormous proliferation of mesenchymal cells and by lymphocytic infiltration.