Artificial liver support at present and in the future

This article discusses and summarizes the current as well as future treatments for liver failure. Currently, liver failure is a fatal disease with significantly high mortality rate, and the primary solution involves a liver transplant. This method has numerous complications, and there is a continuous shortage of available organs. The authors suggest that plasma exchange and continuous hemodiafiltration are currently the two most potential treatments for the disease, but they are still a long ways off from the ideal solution. In the best case scenerio, bioartificial liver support, gene therapy and regenerative medicine will lead to the development of a functional artificial liver.

The article takes a different perspective because the authors are from Japan. Since the Japanese health-care insurance program differs from that of the United States and Europe, Japanese researchers approach the treatment of end-stage liver diseases from a different angle. In Japan, it is illegal to run clinical trials with biological artificial livers. As a result, researchers focus on specific aspects of bioartificial liver development that do not use the liver itself.

There are many different techniques being researched to replace the liver's role in detoxification, metabolism, and regulation, but so far, none of the the controlled clinical trials have yielded the expected benefits. The bioartifical livers are both too complex and too expensive to be used as a regular treatment. Some of the blood purification techniques are becoming standard treatments, but they can only do so much. The conclusion of this article is that a significant amount of research still needs to be done before society can benefit from an affordable and functional artificial liver.

-John

Kazuhiko Onodera, Journal of Artificial Organs, 4/14/06
http://www.springerlink.com/content/rk22478g36373872/fulltext.pdf