Hepatic fibrosis — new therapeutic approaches

THE management of chronic liver disease, particularly cirrhosis, has focused primarily on treating and preventing the complications of portal hypertension. Unfortunately, there is no therapy that has been proved to prevent progressive hepatic fibrosis or cirrhosis. The use of colchicine, one of the oldest known drugs, has been advocated as a means of preventing and even reversing hepatic fibrosis in patients with alcoholic or nonalcoholic cirrhosis.¹ However, many physicians are skeptical, and there have been calls for another randomized, controlled trial, since the drop-out rate and sampling errors inherent in the blind liver-biopsy techniques used in the reported trials could.