Colloid Osmotic Pressure in Chronic Hepatitis

DURING the course of the epidemic of acute infectious hepatitis occurring in Denmark at the time of this report, several cases of chronic hepatitis were noted in elderly women. 1 The characteristics of this form of hepatitis seem to be a grave, usually fatal, course, during which considerable changes take place in the plasma proteins: The value for serum albumin falls and that for serum globulin rises, and symptoms develop suggesting a low colloid osmotic pressure, viz., ascites and edema. The works which so far have dealt with the relation of colloid osmotic pressure to chronic hepatitis are few; moreover, the results published do not agree. 2 Myers and Keefer, 3 Tumen and Bockus 4 and Post and Patek 5 noted a decrease in plasma albumin and accordingly suggested low colloid osmotic pressure as a cause of edema; however, the pressure was not measured directly. Consequently, we thought it justifiable to take advantage of the