Izumi Y, Kaneko A, Oku K, Kimura M, Tanaka S, Tada H, Tatsumi K, Takano T, Hidaka Y, Amino N
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, 2-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
J Intern Med. 2002 Oct;252(4):361-7. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2796.2002.01047.x.
Autoimmune diseases, especially autoimmune thyroid disease, frequently develop after delivery due to the immune rebound mechanism. Most cases involve transient dysfunction of affected organs. We examined three patients who developed liver dysfunction after delivery. They were all diagnosed with definite or probable autoimmune hepatitis using the scoring system of the International Autoimmune Hepatitis Group. Moreover, all of them had anti-CYP2D6 antibodies detected by a sensitive radioligand assay. Our findings strongly suggest that liver dysfunction is induced by postpartum autoimmune hepatitis, and clinicians should be aware of this disease.
