Active clinical trials for "Liver Cirrhosis"

The investigators designed an observational multicenter explorative in vivo study to investigate the changes in ceftriaxone pharmacokinetics in blood and ascites. The investigators will include a total of 20 patients with liver cirrhosis admitted to the ward of participating hospitals. Patients are eligible when receiving ceftriaxone and concomitantly receive paracentesis. The investigators will collect all available waste blood samples of each participant, starting from study entry up until 48 hours after the last dosing interval of ceftriaxone. The investigators will collect all available waste ascites samples of each participant up until 48 hours after the last dosing interval of ceftriaxone. Duration of the trial: The study duration is variable and depends on the duration of ceftriaxone treatment and duration of hospital admission, which both are determined by the treating physician and is not influenced by study participation. Patients will be eligible for study inclusion when patients received (a single dose of) ceftriaxone treatment and undergo paracentesis during ceftriaxone treatment. The study will end 48 hours after the last dosing interval of ceftriaxone or until hospital discharge, whichever comes first. Study timeline: The investigators expect to enrol 1-2 participants every month. The total enrolment time will thus be approximately 12 months.

This clinical trial is a Phase 1, multiple administration, dose-escalasion clinical trial of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of decompensated cirrhosis. The primary objective of this study is to assess the safety of intravenous infusion of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells in patients with decompensated cirrhosis.

This phase I trial studies the side effects and best dose of defined green tea catechin extract and to see how well it works in preventing liver cancer in participants with cirrhosis. Higher levels of the molecule gamma-OHPdG may be found in participants with cirrhosis, which may mean a higher risk of the development of liver cancer. Defined green tea catechin extract may work better to lower levels of gamma-OHPdG and prevent the development of liver cancer.

Carvedilol has been shown to be more potent in decreasing portal hypertension to propranolol. But the efficacy of carvedilol to delay the growth of esophageal varices in chronic hepatitis B patients was unclear.

HCC is the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Although surgical treatment may be effective in patients with HCC, the five-year survival rate is only 50-70%. Moreover, due to the lack of early diagnostic marker, most patients with HCC are often diagnosed in an advanced stage with poor prognosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to further understand the possible aetiological factors and surgical treatment methods to improve the prognosis of patients with HCC. Liver transplantation is an ideal choice for patients with liver cirrhosis with HCC, which can significantly improve the postoperative survival rate. But the most serious problem facing such patients is the shortage of donor livers. In 2015, Norwegian scholars proposed a new surgical method, that is, resection and partial liver segment (2-3 segment) transplantation combined with delayed total hepatectomy can greatly alleviate the shortage of liver donors in the above-mentioned patients. Based on the experience of clinical operation, our center proposes and designs a clinical study of sequential adult left lateral lobe liver transplantation (SALT) for the treatment of patients with liver cirrhosis with HCC. On the basis of RAPID, the safety and efficacy of sequential adult left lateral lobe liver transplantation were evaluated for the above patients.

The main trial objective, is to ascertain whether the transport activity, given by the maximum concentration (Cmax) and the area under the curve (AUC0-24) values for the different components in the transporter cocktail are similar or different in F4 liver cirrhosis patients on standard therapy compared to healthy subjects.

The Primary Objective: To observe and determine the safety and tolerance of allogeneic hepatocyte transplantation in patients with liver cirrhosis and to establish the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) and evaluate the dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs). The Secondary Objective: To observe the therapeutic efficacy of allogeneic hepatocyte transplantation for liver cirrhosis.

This study aims to determine whether a breath test could be used for early detection of hepatic fibrosis, cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. Patients who are attending for a planned liver outpatient services or investigations will be approached to provide a breath sample. Multi platform mass spectrometry analysis will be performed to establish volatile biomarkers that can discriminate between fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Chronic liver disease is a major healthcare problem in Hong Kong and worldwide. The diagnosis of liver fibrosis and inflammation in patients with chronic liver disease has important prognostic and therapeutic implications. The current gold standard to evaluate and stage the severity of liver fibrosis and inflammation is based on liver biopsies, which are invasive and impractical for screening and monitoring the disease. The existing non-invasive methods still have significant limitations to meet the challenge. Magnetic resonance effect can be used to obtain the molecular-level information on the biochemical properties of human tissues. The investigators will develop non-invasive quantitative MRI technologies to evaluate and stage liver fibrosis and inflammation. Our approaches are based on the endogenous contrast mechanism and thus do not need to inject an MRI contrast agent. Our approaches can be implemented on a regular MRI scanner and do not need any extra hardware. To enable the technology for routine clinical use, the investigators will develop fully automated post-processing techniques for the proposed MRI acquisition approaches. The investigators will perform multi-center clinical studies in Hong Kong and mainland China to validate our imaging measurements by histopathologic results from liver biopsies on patient cohorts.

Loss of skeletal muscle mass or sarcopenia is the most common and potentially reversible complication in cirrhosis that increases morbidity and mortality before, during and after liver transplantation. No proven treatments exist for the prevention or reversal of sarcopenia in cirrhosis, primarily because the mechanisms responsible for this are unknown. Based on compelling preliminary studies and those of the co investigator, investigators hypothesize that the mechanism of reduced skeletal muscle mass in cirrhosis is due to a myostatin mediated impaired mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) signaling resulting in reduced protein synthesis and increased autophagy. Investigators further postulate that leucine, a direct stimulant of mTOR, will reverse the impaired mTOR phosphorylation in the skeletal muscle of cirrhotics. The consequent increase in protein synthesis reduced autophagy will result in an increase in skeletal muscle mass. Investigators will test these hypotheses by quantifying the response to acute and long term (3 month) administration of hydroxymethyl butyrate (HMB) enriched essential amino acid compared with an isonitrogenous isocaloric non-essential balanced amino acid mixture (does not stimulate protein synthesis) in cirrhotic patients. Fractional protein synthesis rate (FSR) in skeletal muscle, responses of the molecular regulatory pathways of skeletal muscle protein synthesis, and autophagy flux will be quantified in the acute and long term protocols. Tracer studies using L-[D5]-phenylalanine (Phe) as a primed constant infusion (prime 2µmol.kg-1.hr-1; constant 0.05 µmol.kg-1.hr-1) with and L [ring-D2] tyrosine, forearm plethysmography, and sequential skeletal muscle biopsies (total of 3 per study subject) will be used to quantify these outcomes. Anthropometric, clinical and body composition measures will be additional outcome measures for the long term intervention. Expression of regulatory signaling proteins, myostatin, IGF-1 (insulin like growth factor) , phospho-Akt, phospho-AMPK (activated protein kinase), phospho-mTOR and phospho-p70s6k will be quantified by Western immunoblots. Autophagy flux will be measured by quantifying expression of the autophagosome proteins.