[Uridine diphosphate glucose (UDPG) in the treatment of hepatic disease from chronic alcohol abuse].

Fatty liver can be determined by chronic abuse of alcohol, by means of direct action of the same on the level of membrane's proteins. The UDPG restores the levels of a membrane's component, the phosphoribosylpyrophosphate (PRPP), which normally results reduced in cellular cultures of rat's liver, after the addition of alcohol. It has been made a study on 40 patients (27 men and 13 women age medium 54 years) alcoholics for at least 1 year with a quantity of ethanol ingested less than 1 g gamma/die/kg of body weight with alternated values of serum GOT, GPT and gamma-GT and clinical aspects of a modest alcoholic hepatopathy, assigning through, at random in double blind, two groups of treatment: the first one with UDPG (400 mg/im/die for 30 days) the second one with placebo. It has been considered like variable of therapeutic effect the difference between basal value and the result at the end of treatment of these serum enzymes, it has been applied the Student's t test for the evaluation of the difference between treatments. It has been shown in the groups of patients analyzed with UDPG (not the group of placebo) reduction extremely significant for the gamma-GT (p = 0.00032) and GOT (p = 0.0138). In 5 treated cases, after an hepatic ultrasound imaging of comparison, at the end of the treatment, it has been demonstrated an apparent improvement of thickening of the echos; only 3/40 of the patients have certainly stopped to ingest alcoholic drinks.