Click here to view next page of this article

 

Cystic Fibrosis of the Liver

Cystic fibrosis is usually thought of as being a disease involving the lungs. Interestingly, cirrhosis with portal hypertension can occur in cystic fibrosis, generally presenting in mid or older age children cystic fibrosis. Sometimes the liver disease is much more important than the lung disease in these children, and they may also present with portal hypertension and already developed cirrhosis. If they’ve got portal hypertension, you try to shunt some of these children if they are big enough, because of course we are very worried about transplanting children who may already have chronic lung disease and all the problems of immunosuppression and chronic lung disease.

Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency. The metabolic causes of chronic liver disease in children, by far and away the most common is alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency. And if you remember, this is, generally speaking, associated with the ZZ phenotype. Occasionally you see it with some of the other phenotypes like MZ, but for purposes of keeping life simple, it’s the ZZ phenotype, generally speaking. As I said before, these children may have presented in infancy with a high bilirubin which completely went away, the diagnosis may never have been made until they come into your office or in to the hospital in childhood and they’ve already developed signs of portal hypertension. Interestingly, the lung disease tends to occur quite late in alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, whereas the liver disease will present sometimes quite early. Sometimes the cirrhosis is fully established and portal hypertension with a non-jaundiced child with a big spleen and may be vomiting blood in the emergency room, is the first sign that this child had alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency.

Wilson’s disease. You might only see one in your life but you sure don’t want to miss it. This is a disease which is marked by defective copper metabolism. You wind up with far too much copper in your liver, your central nervous system, and also in the kidney. The liver and the central nervous system are the two that really present to you most often, in terms of clinical symptoms. Now on the lab tests, what are you going to see? The serum copper is low and the serum ceruloplasmin, which is the carrier.

The presentation can be all over the map. It can present as acute fulminant hepatitis. If it does, the tip-off is that these children have acute hemolytic anemia in association with their fulminant liver failure. If you see that combination, think Wilson’s disease until proven otherwise. They may present as a chronic active hepatitis, cirrhosis, portal hypertension, variceal bleeding. They may be totally asymptomatic with just a moderately elevated transaminitis.

The treatment for Wilson’s disease depends on when your diagnose is, which is why early diagnosis is essential. If there is no cirrhosis you are going to treat these patients with chelating agents, like penicillamine. However, if fully developed cirrhosis has already occurred, or they are presenting to you in fulminant liver failure, you have no other option but liver transplantation. There is another reason why diagnosis is so very important, because once you identify the index case you’ve got to screen those family members because you may be sitting on an asymptomatic sibling who you can treat very successfully with chelating agents.