To determine the optimum bile acid regimen for rapid gall stone dissolution, 48 gall stone patients were divided into four groups of 12 according to stone diameter and were randomly allocated to receive one of four treatment regimens: bedtime or mealtime chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA, 12 mg/kg/day) and bedtime or mealtime ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA, 12 mg/kg/day). An additional 10 patients treate...

Pregnancy and contraceptive steroids are associated with a raised incidence of cholesterol gall stone disease. In pregnancy there is an increase in the size of the gall bladder. Investigation of hepatobiliary function in man and mammals has not established if the enlarged gall bladder is simply dilated, or if the absorptive capacity of the mucosa has changed. In the present study the concentrat...

Little is known of the temporal and quantitative relationships between emptying of the stomach and of the gall bladder in patients with duodenal ulcer before and after vagotomy. A non-invasive double isotope technique was used to investigate these relationships in 27 patients with a duodenal ulcer, before and after operation-truncal vagotomy and pyloroplasty (TV + P; n = 15) and highly selectiv...

Mucus synthesis by the human gall bladder EDITOR,-I was interested to read the papers by Rhodes and colleagues concerning mucus synthesis by the human gall bladder, its apparent inhibition by aspirin, and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and the suggestion that aspirin might prevent cholesterol gall stone formation by this action As gall bladder mucus glycoprotein (mucin) i...

The frequency of surgical exposure of the bile ducts and gall bladder has made the surgeon increasingly aware of the anatomic variations in these structures and their blood supply. The double gall bladder in man is a rare anomaly. Of the 103 previous reports of double gall bladders that are available to the author, only 68 occurrences of this anomaly were actually proved at operation or autopsy...

UNLABELLED Due to the constant increase of public health awareness and widespread "cancerophobia", the progressively larger number of incidentally diagnosed gall-bladder polyps became the source of anxiety, which leads patients and physicians to undertake therapeutic decisions, despite the absence of symptoms. The majority of gall-bladder polyps are benign. It is estimated that only 3 to 5% of ...

Both predators and parasitoids can have significant effects on species' life history traits, such as longevity or clutch size. In the case of gall inducers, sporadically there is evidence to suggest that both vertebrate predation and insect parasitoid attack may shape the optimal gall size. While the effects of parasitoids have been studied in detail, the influence of vertebrate predation is le...

Ligation of the common bile duct (BDL) in the male rabbit resulted in increased gall-bladder microsomal total cyclo-oxygenase activity with prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and 6-oxoprostaglandin F1 alpha [6-oxo-PGF1 alpha, stable metabolite of prostaglandin I2 (PGI2; prostacyclin)] as the major prostanoids synthesized after 24 and 72 h. Kinetic analysis of gallbladder microsomal membrane fractions incu...

THERE is a widespread reluctance amongst surgeons to undertake cholecystectomy on the basis of symptoms alone. These views derive from early studies suggesting an unacceptable incidence of the post-cholecystectomy syndrome in such cases.' There is however, a well recognised group of patients with typical biliary tract symptoms and normal oral cholecystography ('stoneless symptoms') who pose con...