Recent years have seen an increasing number of supposedly active drugs for the treatment of
chronic liver diseases, e.g. ursodeoxycholate for treatment of cholestatic conditions and alpha-interferon for the treatment of
chronic viral hepatitis. However, in all controlled studies, hard end-points such as survival or need for transplantation often cannot be obtained, owing to the prolonged course of chronic liver diseases up to the time of hepatic decompensation and death. Therefore, surrogate markers for the different conditions are sorely needed in order to assess the value of these
novel treatment modalities. This book, the proceedings of an International Falk Workshop held in Basel…
