Active clinical trials for "Liver Cirrhosis, Alcoholic"

Investigator seek to determine whether the volume of the liver can predict the survival after a decompensation of a patient suffering from chronic liver disease caused by excessive alcohol consumption (or alcoholic cirrhosis). Our hypothesis is that patients with a "small" liver have a lower survival compared to patients having a "normal" sized liver.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a frequent complication of cirrhosis. Occurrence of HCC could be linked with multiple functional region of genome. The determining of a genomic mapping of " single nucleotide polymorphisms " (SNPs) permit to perform some genetic link studies with pathologies without clear hereditary disposition. In this study, the investigators will identify predictives genetic polymorphism of HCC.

This is an observational study to identify the prevalence of advanced liver fibrosis among patients with excessive alcohol intake using a non-invasive method (FibroScan®) and to characterize the main environmental, genetic and epigenetic factors that could influence the development of advanced fibrosis. The investigators will include patients 21 years of age or older with excessive alcohol intake, with abnormal AST, ALT, GGT and/or bilirubin, and without any evidence of decompensated liver disease (jaundice, ascites, encephalopathy). Liver fibrosis will be estimated by FibroScan®. A designed questionnaire for studying environmental and psychosocial factors will be filled by the included patients, and blood samples will be obtained to study genetic and epigenetic factors. The patients with advance fibrosis will be referred to the specialist for surveillance and treatment according to current clinical guidelines.

Objective: To validate ethyl glucuronide in scalp hair, fingernail and urine as a biomarker for alcohol use in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis. Background: Alcoholic cirrhosis is a leading indication for liver transplantation in abstinent patients. However, the assessment of alcohol use remains a daily diagnostic challenge. Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) is the most promising biomarker for the detection of alcohol use. EtG can be both a short-term (urinary EtG) and long-term biomarker (scalp hair and nail EtG). Although EtG is synthetized in the hepatocyte, the validation of these biomarkers and their proposed cut-off values is not present or scarce in patients with cirrhosis, impeding their widespread clinical use. Therefore, the investigators will assess the diagnostic accuracy of EtG in scalp hair, fingernail and urine in a cohort of patients with cirrhosis. In addition, the investigators will apply a new mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) method to visualize the distribution of EtG in scalp hair, allowing a visual chronological assessment of alcohol intake based on a single hair strand. Methods: Blood, proximal scalp hair, fingernail samples and urine will be collected from patients with alcoholic cirrhosis at the Maastricht University Medical Center. Alcohol intake in the previous 3 months will be questioned using the Timeline Followback method. The diagnostic accuracy of hair EtG (analyzed with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-MSI and routine gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS)), fingernail and urinary EtG (both GC-MS/MS) for moderate and excessive alcohol use will be assessed in a validation cohort. Secondly, the investigators will assess the diagnostic potential of these EtG biomarkers in a clinical application group of patients with alcoholic cirrhosis undergoing screening for liver transplantation. Anticipated results: The combination of different EtG biomarkers allows accurate assessment of abstinence and alcohol use in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis and therefore can be implemented in the daily care of liver patients.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major public health problem, whose incidence is increasing in developed countries and is the leading cause of death in patients with cirrhosis. The diagnosis and the early management are key issues that could improve the prognosis. In France, alcoholic cirrhosis is the leading cause of HCC, while the aetiology of underlying chronic liver disease is mainly hepatitis C (HCV) in Southern Europe and Japan, and hepatitis B (HBV) in Asia and Africa. In the next years, due to the improved results of anti-viral therapies, this trend should be reinforced with a decreasing proportion of HCC related to viral cirrhosis and an increasing proportion of HCC related to alcoholic cirrhosis. However, natural history of alcoholic cirrhosis remains poorly understood, most studies being retrospective and including a small number of patients. This project is filed by the consortium CIRRAL including French Academic hospitals centers currently involved and referees in the field of alcoholic liver disease and HCC (8 at the moment, and more in the next months). It is a national multicenter prospective study that will include 1200 patients with alcoholic cirrhosis histologically proven over 3 years. The main goal of this cohort is to describe the natural history of a large number of patients with alcoholic cirrhosis prospectively followed, and to identify predictors of the occurrence of HCC.

Alcohol is the common precipitating factor for both cirrhosis of liver as well as alcohol related chronic pancreatitis. However, in real life clinical setting, clinicians do not frequently see many cases of symptomatic pancreatitis in patients who present with features of cirrhosis of liver. On the contrary, in some patients presenting with alcohol related chronic pancreatitis, evidence of cirrhosis of liver is observed on imaging without other clinical features of cirrhosis.