Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Oct 8, 2016; 8(28): 1157-1168
Published online Oct 8, 2016. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v8.i28.1157
Cirrhosis and autoimmune liver disease: Current understanding
Rodrigo Liberal, Charlotte R Grant
Rodrigo Liberal, Charlotte R Grant, Institute of Liver Studies, King’s College London School of Medicine at King’s College Hospital, London SE 9RS, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Liberal R and Grant CR contributed to paper design, literature search, drafting and editing of the manuscript; both authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Rodrigo Liberal, Institute of Liver Studies, King’s College London School of Medicine at King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS, United Kingdom. rodrigo.liberal@kcl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44-2032-993397 Fax: +44-2032-993760
Received: March 3, 2016
Peer-review started: March 7, 2016
First decision: April 15, 2016
Revised: July 22, 2016
Accepted: August 6, 2016
Article in press: August 8, 2016
Published online: October 8, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: In chronic liver disease, including autoimmune liver diseases, perpetual liver injury leads to persistent inflammation, cell proliferation and the deposition of extracellular matrix proteins. If left untreated, this process eventually leads to the development of liver cirrhosis, characterised by the presence of fibrosis and nodular regeneration. Liver biopsy is currently the gold standard technique, but highly promising non-invasive methodology is under development.