SCIENCE@home

A hundred years of the hepatotrophic controversy.

T. Starzl,K. Porter,J. Francavilla,J. Bénichou,C. Putnam

Published 1977 in Ciba Foundation symposium

ABSTRACT

Venous blood returning from the splanchnic viscera has liver-supporting (hepatotrophic) qualities not found to the same degree in other kinds of arterial or venous blood. The effects of portal blood have been noted in animals with two livers (or a differential portal blood supply to different regions of one liver) to include hypertrophy, glycogen storage, hyperplasia, capacity for regeneration, increase of several synthetic functions, and maintenance of normal structure. The main splanchnic venous hepatotrophic factors are endogenous hormones of which the single most important is insulin. Thus, the foregoing portal hepatotrophic effects are largely eliminated with the diabetes produced by alloxan or total pancreatectomy. The injury of portacaval shunt is caused by the diversion of the hormones around the liver. Accordingly, the atrophy, injury to the organelles, and loss of the capacity for cell renewal is minimized if insulin is infused into the portally deprived liver. In these and other experiments, exogenous glucagon alone or the addition of glucagon to insulin has had no effect, but this may be because of the masking presence of gut glucagon and other hormonal or non-hormonal substances in our models. At present, the effects on the liver of exogenous insulin, glucagon, epidermal growth factor, and numerous other hormones are being determined by their intraportal infusion into eviscerated dogs in which other endogenous splanchnic factors have been eliminated.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    1977

  • Venue

    Ciba Foundation symposium

  • Publication date

    Unknown publication date

  • Fields of study

    Medicine

  • Identifiers
    PMID 207494
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar, PubMed

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-41 of 41 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-42 of 42 citing papers · Page 1 of 1