Immune Reactions In Liver Disease HB

Out Of Print... It is about eight years since our last meeting on immune reactions in liver disease. Some of you who were at that meeting will know only too well what an enormous amount has been added to our knowledge since then. We would not be able to cover it all in this book and we have therefore tried to identify certain main areas of importance. Active chronic hepatitis is at the centre of the stage, but in alcoholic liver disease and hepatic drug reactions there is undoubtedly, at least in some patients, an autoimmune component. The scope too has been widened by the finding of a relationship to certain histocompatibility antigens and familial influences are also more clearly apparent. We hope that our discussions here will give some perspective to these new areas of knowledge. There are three questions too, to which I hope we will address ourselves in this book even if we may not be able to answer them exactly as yet. 1. Can we ever prove that autoimmunity is damaging to the liver in man 2. Can we relate the defects in immunoregulation to a genetic backgtound 3. Can specific immunotherapy for the abnormalities found be developed