Originally the syndrome was described in South Africa at 1920, but at present it is endemic in Jamaica, encountered in Afghanistan and India. The syndrome was described under dif‐ ferent names, from Jamaica the disease was described under the term Jamaican veno-occlu‐ sive disease, in India the disease was given the term Indian childhood Cirrhosis (ICC), in Europe HVOD has been called endophleb...

To the Editor of The: Indian Medical Gazette. Sir,?It is accepted by the majority, in the present state of our knowledge, that alcohol is a very common cause of the cirrhosis of the liver, though it is not the only cause. The publication of an ingenious theory by Dr. M. Umar in the Indian Medical Gazette of November 1921, about the manufacture of alcohol in the stomach from the food by the acti...

AIM To find out the association of common HFE mutations (viz., C282Y and H63D) with primary iron overload (PIL) in liver cirrhosis (CLD) patients of Indian origin. METHODS Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method was used for screening C282Y and H63D mutation in 496 CLD patients (hepatitis B virus associated cirrhosis (HBVc) = 74, hepatitis C virus associated ...

Two West Indian patients with Kveim-biopsy proven sarcoidosis developed chronic cholestatic liver disease, clinically and biochemically similar to primary biliary cirrhosis. Liver histology revealed multiple granulomas with reduction in bile ducts and, in one patient, progression to biliary cirrhosis. Portal hypertension was present in both patients leading to severe variceal haemorrhage in one...

An immunohistochemical technique is described for the detection of Mallory bodies (MBs) in paraffin sections of liver tissue. This is based on proteolytic digestion of sections before exposure to an antiserum which recognises a unique antigenic determinant in MBs. With the use of this procedure it has been shown in alcoholic liver disease, primary biliary cirrhosis. Indian childhood cirrhosis, ...

The small subunit (SSU) processome is a large ribonucleoprotein that is required for maturation of the 18S rRNA of the ribosome. Recently, a missense mutation in the C-terminus of an SSU processome protein, Utp4/Cirhin, was reported to cause North American Indian childhood cirrhosis (NAIC). In this study, we use Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model to investigate the role of the NAIC mutation in...

1885 ket anyway — insurers come and go all the time — but those who do leave now will undoubtedly blame health care reform, including the loss-ratio provisions. The American Medical Association actively lobbied the NAIC for strong loss-ratio requirements to ensure that insurance premiums actually pay for health care services. The share of premiums that goes to overhead and profit will also beco...