The Liver

The adult human liver normally weighs between 1.4 - 1.6 kilograms and it is a soft, pinkish-brown "boomerang shaped" organ. It is the second largest organ (the largest organ being the skin) and the largest gland within the human body. It is located on the right side of the upper abdomen below the diaphragm. The liver lies to the right of the stomach and overlies the gallbladder (which stores bile).

The liver’s job is to run over 500 bodily functions to keep you healthy. It is also a very important organ because it filters everything you eat and breathe – even things that get on your skin.

The liver has two sources of blood supply. The hepatic portal vein brings in purple-red, de-oxygenated, venous blood containing digested food. The hepatic artery conveys bright red, oxygenated, arterial blood.

All blood leaving the liver is collected in the hepatic veins, which join together into a single hepatic vein that empties into the lower vena cava. From here, blood is passed back to the right side of the heart, to be pumped to the lungs for re-oxygenation. And the cycle begins again.

Hepatitis C HCV and your Liver - Understanding Liver Inflammation

Living with chronic Hepatitis C HCV means constantly battling liver inflammation. If this inflammation rages unabatedly, it causes liver disease to progress. The progress of Hepatitis C and liver inflammation is as follows:

· Hepatitis C HCV results in the death of liver cells.

· The death of liver cells triggers the dispatching of inflammatory cells to the affected area. Inflammation begins the processes that lead to fibrosis, the body’s response to liver damage.

· Inflammation triggers a reaction by a group of cells in the liver called stellate cells.

· Infected and inflamed liver cells release chemical signals (called cytokines), which activate leukocytes (white blood cells) from outside the liver to travel to the affected area.

· The cytokines and leukocytes team up with Kupffer cells to signal the stellate cells to produce and lay down collagen fibers between liver cells. A fibrous protein that forms scar tissue, collagen is the body’s attempt to limit the spread of infection to other cells.

· Normally, as an infection or injury resolves, the collagen matrix enclosing the injury is dissolved and activated stellate cells die off, allowing the tissue to return to normal. In chronic HCV, this matrix of collagen grows more rapidly than it can dissolve.

· The collagen builds up scar tissue around cells causing living liver cells to lose their access to the nutrient and oxygen rich blood flow.

· The restricted access to blood causes even more quarantined liver cells to die. As such, HCV progressively scars the liver.

This vicious cycle of inflammation causing scar tissue must be stopped to prevent a person’s chronic Hepatitis C HCV from causing more and more liver damage.