Use of bile acid sequestrant in treatment of pruritus associated with biliary cirrhosis.

Pruritus is usually a major complaint of patients with biliary cirrhosis. This symptom can be so severe and unremitting that the patient may contemplate suicide (1). When there is interference with normal excretion of bile, as in biliary cirrhosis and other forms of bile stasis, itching may be aa early and persistent symptom. There appears to be a lack of correlation between degree of bilirubinemia and pruritus. Attempts to correlate presence of pruritus with degree of retention of bile acids have yielded conflicting results