Decreased circulating clusterin reflects severe liver complications after hepatoportoenterostomy of biliary atresia

This study aimed to determine whether circulating levels of clusterin (CLU), an extracellular chaperone implicated in cholestatic and fibrotic processes, are associated with clinical parameters of post-operative BA patients and could serve as a BA biomarker. Ninety-six BA patients and 56 healthy controls were recruited. Circulating CLU levels were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Circulating CLU levels were significantly reduced in BA patients – especially those with worse outcomes including jaundice, severe liver fibrosis, and late-stage of hepatic dysfunction. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that circulating CLU levels were negatively associated with outcome parameters indicating jaundice status, degree of fibrosis, and liver dysfunction, but positively correlated with serum albumin and platelet number of BA patients. Lower circulating CLU levels were considerably associated with poor survival of post-operative BA patients. Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated a diagnostic value of circulating CLU as a non-invasive indicator for poor outcomes of BA patients (AUC = 0.85), with a sensitivity of 81.5% and a specificity of 73.5%. All findings indicate that reduced circulating CLU might reflect poor outcomes of BA patients and have potential as a novel biomarker for the disease severity following Kasai-operation.

Intravenous antibiotics for the treatments of cholangitis after Kasai operation in biliary atresia patients

Objective: This is a single-center, retrospective study, to assess the experimental treatment of intravenous antibiotics for cholangitis after Kasai portoenterostomy (PKE) in biliary atresia (BA) patients.Methods: 153 cholangitis patients after PKE from January 2016 to December 2018 were retrospectively reviewed. Based on the different kinds of antibiotics treatment, all patients were divided into 3 groups: Intravenous Cefoperazone Sodium Tazobactam Sodium (ICSTS) group, Intravenous Meropenem (IMP) group, Meropenem combined with Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) group, compared the tre atment effect among 3 groups.Results: The recurrent cholangitis rate of ICSTS group, IMP group and IVIG group is 28.9%,39.4%, 85.7% respectively. The IVIG group had higher temperature (T), white blood cell (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) lever than ICSTS group and IMP group (P <0.05) before interference. The antifebrile rate had no significant difference among 3 groups after 3 days hospitalization, as we expected, the level of WBC, CRP, DBL was significant descend in each group, the level of ALT, AST, γ-GGT was obviously decline in IVIG group. After 3 months followed-up, IVIG group showed a recurrent rate of 82%, which was higher than ICSTS group and IMP group (P=0.013), the cholangitis frequency was significant higher in IVIG group than ICSTS group and IMP group (P<0.05).Conclusions: Personalized intravenous antibiotics to treat cholangitis considering recurrent episode, the severity of infection and liver function, may be a more appropriate treatment strategy.