Lack of hepatocyte involvement in the genesis of the sinusoidal dilatation related to heroin addiction: a morphometric study.

A histological and morphometric study demonstrated a relationship between vascular changes in the hepatic lobule and heroin consumption. To establish the role of hepatocytes in the genesis of sinusoidal dilatation, morphometric analysis was performed on ten drug abusers and eight controls. A total of 1800 hepatocytes, in 67 centrilobular areas, were analysed from biopsies from the total patient number. Computerized results of hepatocyte surface area, perimeter, maximum linear dimension and minimum linear dimension demonstrated no statistically significant difference for these variables, particularly for hepatocyte surface area (Controls: 268.66 +/- 95.25; drug abusers: 252.00 +/- 78.94, p = 0.24), when the two groups of patients were compared. Hepatocyte morphology at the time of the biopsy was unaltered, although transaminase values were elevated for all drug abusers. It is, therefore, possible that the hepatocytes were not implicated in the pathogenesis of sinusoidal dilatation. This suggestion supports our previous results, which suggested that heroin was capable of inducing direct vascular hepatotoxicity.