Overview of Liver Disease

Liver cirrhosis is any condition that causes liver inflammation or tissue damage and affects liver function. The liver is a vital organ located in the upper right-hand side of the abdomen. It is as large as a football, weighs 2-3 pounds, and performs numerous functions for the body: converting nutrients derived from food into essential blood components, storing vitamins and minerals, regulating bloods clotting, producing proteins and enzymes, maintaining hormone balances, and metabolizing and detoxifying substances that would otherwise be harmful to the body. The liver makes factors that help the human immune system fight infection, removes bacteria from the blood, and makes bile, which is essential for digestion.

What is liver Cirrhosis?

Liver cirrhosis is categorized both by the cause and the effect it has on the liver. Causes may include infection, injury, exposure to drugs or toxic compounds, an autoimmune process, or a genetic defect that leads to the deposition and build-up of damaging substances such as iron or copper. Effects may include inflammation, scarring, obstructions, clotting abnormalities, and liver failure.

Formal treatments of liver Cirrhosis?

Although liver has a very good regenerative capacity but in chronic liver disease, this begins to fail, and then fibrosis, and eventually cirrhosis develops, called end stage liver disease (ESLD). Chronic liver disease is the fifth leading cause of death after cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and respiratory disease.



At present liver transplantation is the only therapeutic option for patients with acute and chronic ESLDs and liver based metabolic defects. Liver transplantation, however, has the disadvantage of requiring lifelong immunosuppressant, with 10–15% of patients dying whilst on the waiting list due to the shortage of donated organs.



Hepatocyte Cells transplantation has been suggested as an alternative to liver transplantation, especially for hepatic disorders but the widespread application of hepatocyte transplantation, however, is also limited by organ availability, by problems with viability of isolated hepatocytes after cryopreservation, and by the potential formation of hepatocyte aggregates after transplantation because hepatocyte cell has the problems of insufficient cell survival and engraftment.