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How is autoimmune hepatitis treated?

Autoimmune hepatitis is characterized by progressive chronic inflammatory processes in the liver parenchyma, leading to liver tissue necrosis. The disease can proceed in a latent form, but more often it reveals itself with a number of symptoms similar to the symptoms of viral hepatitis: pain in the right hypochondrium, general ill health, yellowness of tissues, an increase in liver volume, ascites, fever, colitis. Particular signs of autoimmune hepatitis can manifest as a hemorrhagic rash followed by pigmentation of the affected skin.

Nonspecific signs of autoimmune hepatitis:

Diarrheal disorders,
Acne disease,
The presence of systemic diseases of the skin, connective tissue, blood vessels.

To confirm the diagnosis, an enzyme immunoassay is performed and specific markers of autoimmune hepatitis are detected. Due to the fact that the disease is constantly progressing, patients with autoimmune hepatitis do not show signs of prolonged remission of the disease, only a short-term improvement in health.

Treating autoimmune hepatitis is a difficult task. The treatment is based on taking glucocorticosteroid drugs (prednisolone, methylprednisolone). There are relative contraindications to these drugs for concomitant diseases: diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and many others. In some cases, immunosuppressants are prescribed, but their use does not always have adequate results. It is necessary to follow a diet: exclude fatty, fried and spicy foods, alcohol-containing drinks, high-carbohydrate foods that disrupt the liver. If drug treatment is ineffective, transplantation of the liver or part of the liver is indicated.

Prevention of autoimmune hepatitis does not exist, since the exact causes of this disease have not yet been clarified.

The prognosis of survival for autoimmune hepatitis, taking into account modern methods of treatment and the timely application of these methods, is twenty years in 80% of cases, with an untreated disease in 50% of cases it is about five years.