CHRONIC HEPATITIS: METABOLIC, CHOLESTATIC, VIRAL AND AUTOIMMUNE

This book is the proceedings of Falk Symposium 157, entitled ‘Chronic Hepatitis: Metabolic, Cholestatic, Viral and Autoimmune’, held in Freiburg, Germany, on 10--11 October 2006 (one of three symposia during the XIII Falk Liver Week 2006). It provides up-to-date information on new developments in the field of chronic hepatitis and its various entities.

In recent decades we have learned how heterogeneous the clinical entity of chronic hepatitis has become. The liver, as the central organ of metabolism and detoxification, is more than ever a target of disease processes evolving from the spread of obesity in the western world. Apart from nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), alcoholic liver disease is still the most prevalent liver disease in the west. Alcohol-induced liver disease exhibits a broad clinical spectrum from alcoholic steatohepatitis to cirrhosis.