A prospective trial of steroid therapy in severe viral hepatitis

Early prediction of short-term development of hepatic encephalopathy in patients with acute liver disease unrelated to paracetamol. A prospective study in Japan

“…Previous randomized trials of various treatments (steroids [11][12][13], anticoagulation with heparin [14] or antithrombin preparations [15]) which gave negative results were conducted in patients with established ALF who had already developed submassive to massive hepatocellular destruction and, therefore, were likely unable to respond effectively to medical therapies.…”

Glucocorticoids can increase the survival rate of patients with severe viral hepatitis B

“…The design and results of the two studies were available in their abstract. Four studies [3,[27][28][29] focused on preliver failure and four [24][25][26]30] examined liver failure. All studies compared glucocorticoid therapy with routine medical treatment and observation occurred for more than 4 weeks.…”

“…A total of 216 articles were associated with glucocorticoid treatment of severe hepatitis B, of which eight were included in our study after checking the documents [3,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] (Fig. 1).…”

Induction of Bcl-xL is a possible mechanism of anti-apoptotic effect by prostaglandin E2 EP4-receptor agonist in human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells

“…As anti-inflammatory agents, therefore, glucocorticoids have been commonly used for many inflammatory disorders and its effectiveness is widely accepted [6]. In FHF, however, the usefulness of glucocorticoids was not clinically demonstrated in several studies [7][8][9][10], although we could demonstrate their marked anti-apoptotic effect on hepatocytes in an experimental rat model of acute hepatic injury [11]. The discrepancy in effectiveness between clinical trials and experimental studies is considered to account for the timing to start treatment.…”

“…Sheng et al [16] reported that prostaglandin E2 directly enhances Bcl-2 expression in a colon cancer cell line (HCA- 7), and that its effect on intestinal epithelium may enhance the tumorigenic potential of intestinal epithelial cells. Takehara et al [17] reported that a high expression level of Bcl-xL is implicated in the prevention of apoptosis of HepG2 cells, a highly differentiated hepatoma cell line.…”