Current Research Highlights

Research highlights by the Pediatric Liver Care Center's team at Cincinnati Children's include:

Clinical Center for Cholestatic Liver Disease in Children

This project is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Investigators in this center perform translational research focused on diagnosis, pathogenesis and novel therapeutic modalities for children with biliary atresia and other causes of chronic liver disease (Alagille syndrome, cholestasis, inflammatory liver diseases).

One important component of the center is the effort to study children with biliary atresia. This is done through a nationwide clinical research consortium sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to establish a database of clinical information and serum and tissue samples from children with biliary atresia to facilitate and perform clinical, epidemiological and therapeutic research in this important pediatric liver disease.

Biliary atresia results from a progressive obliteration of the biliary system. Following obstruction, it leads to cirrhosis in the majority of the patients, and accounts for approximately 50 percent of the indications for liver transplantation in children worldwide.

This database will be used to systematically search for the cause of biliary atresia and explore novel treatments to block disease progression. Principal investigator: Jorge Bezerra, MD. Co-investigator: Alexander Miethke, MD.