Does long-term home parenteral nutrition in adult patients cause chronic liver disease?

Sixty patients with gut failure were treated with home parenteral nutrition for 2000 patient months. Fifty-one of these 60 patients had either no abnormalities or mild and transient elevations of their liver chemistries and did not have liver biopsies. Nine (15%) of 60 patients had abnormalities of liver tests that persisted from 8 to 95 months (median, 18 months) which prompted one or more liver biopsies per patient. Three patients had prolonged jaundice, one died of hepatic encephalopathy, and another with protracted intrahepatic cholestasis died following a biliary tract exploration. A third patient remains ill with signs and symptoms of chronic liver disease. Steatohepatitis was found in eight of the nine patients and was characterized by centrilobular and midzonal microvesicular and macrovesicular fatty changes with fat cysts, focal necrosis, and mixed inflammatory infiltrates. Centrilobular fibrosis was present in three patients and evidence of nodular regeneration in one. In the three patients demonstrating cholestasis, bile pigment was identified both in hepatocytes and canaliculi. Ceroid pigment in Kupffer cells was a consistent finding and much more severe than expected from the mildness of the hepatitis. Persistent abnormalities of liver chemistries in nine patients and progressive liver disease while receiving home parenteral nutrition in three patients are quite worrisome and suggest that home parenteral nutrition-associated steatohepatitis with or without cholestasis may progress to chronic liver disease.