Seventeen Cases with Herbal Madicine-Induced Hepatitis

Lee, Joon Sang; Lee, Dong Yun; Kim, Young Mook; Lee, Ji Hyun; Ryu, In Yeol; Yun, Seong Joon; Shin, Won Hyuk; Lee, Jeong Suk; Choi, Yei Hyuk; Hong, Su Hee; You, Jong Hoon

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The reports on herbal medicine-induced hepatitis are increasing in Korea, China, America, Japan and other countries. To find the differences between other types of hepatitis and herbal medicine-induced hepatitis, we studied patients clinical manifestation, biochemical liver function test and liver biopsy finding. In addition, we tried to find thc definitive causative agents.
METHODS
We studied 17 patients who had herbal medicine-induced hepatitis, and were admitted to Wallace Memorial Baptist Hospital, Pusan, Korea from January 1995 to January 1997. Their symptoms at admission were jaundice, general weakness and indigestion. The patients who had viral hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and other causcs of hepatitis were excluded in this study. We studied the patient's medication history, clinical manifestation, biochemical liver function test and liver biopsy finding.
RESULTS
The ratio of male to female was 1:1.8. Age distribution was from 26 to 56 years and mean age was 41 years. Clinical manifestations at admission were jaundice, general weakness, indigestion in order of frequency, On the liver biopsy findings, heavy infiltration of inflammatory eells around the portal tracts, degeneration of hepatocytes and diffuse hepatic necrosis were observed, but there were no significant difference between herbal medicine-induced hepatitis and that of other causes of hepatitis.
CONCLUSIONS
There was no significant difference in clinical manifestations, biochemical liver function tests and liver biopsy findings between herbal medicineinduced hepatitis and other acute hepatitis. Thus, we conclude that cowork with oriental medicine partner would be needed for evaluating the eauses of herbal medicine-induced hapatitis.