Lymphocytes and Liver: Domestic Bliss or Dangerous Liaisons'

Immune-mediated injury plays an important role in the pathogenesis of many forms of liver injury, extending far beyond those disorders such as primary biliary cirrhosis and autoimmune hepatitis, which are classically considered to be immunological liver diseases. In this issue of Seminars in Liver Disease, entitled “Lymphocytes and Liver: Domestic Bliss or Dangerous Liaisons'” Guest Editors M. Eric Gershwin and Ian R. Mackay have assembled and expertly edited a series of seven reviews by established experts that address both fundamental and clinical questions about the interactions of the immune system with the liver, and go on to consider the impact of immune processes on the clinical evolution of such diverse conditions as chronic viral hepatitis, steatohepatitis, transplantation tolerance, and autoimmune liver disease.

An international authority on immune-mediated liver disease, Dr. Gershwin is one of our most prolific Guest Editors, having assembled four excellent and widely cited issues of Seminars between 1989 and 2005 devoted to Primary Biliary Cirrhosis. His equally distinguished colleague, Professor Ian R. Mackay, joined him as Co-Guest Editor of the first three of these issues, while Dr. John Vierling was Co-Guest Editor of the fourth. Drs. Gershwin and Mackay have been interested for some time in producing an issue that illustrated the broader significance of immune processes to clinical hepatology. I believe that readers will find the resulting issue particularly illuminating.

Further discussion of this broad topic will appear in our November 2007 issue, devoted to Pathogenesis of Liver Injury, and assembled by another of our highly prolific Guest Editors, Professor Gregory Gores. Among the reviews in that issue will be those devoted to “Innate Immune Response and Hepatic Inflammation” and “Immune-Mediated Liver Injury.” Taken together, these two issues of Seminars will afford the reader a state-of-the-art review of what is known about this important interaction between the immune system and the liver and the role of the former in the pathogenesis of diseases of the latter.