The cellular changes that occur in the liver of patients with systemic mastocytosis (SM) have been recently described in a study published in Liver International.
SM is a hematological disease characterized by excessive mast cell activation, proliferation and infiltration in tissues where they are not supposed to be. While SM does not typically affect the liver, in a minority of patients, mast cells can infiltrate and cause damage. In some cases, liver damage can be extensive enough to produce liver failure and death.
Learn more about SM signs and symptoms
Although the characteristics of mast cell infiltration in tissues such as the skin and bone marrow have been studied and described extensively at a microscopic level, there is no such description for the liver.
Due to the importance of SM as a differential diagnosis in patients with liver failure, the authors aimed to describe possible findings in a liver biopsy of SM patients. The study used biopsy samples from 28 patients.
Most of the included patients were males over the age of 65. Almost all of them had an increased liver size (hepatomegaly) and liquid in the abdominal cavity (ascites) due to increased pressure in the portal vein. Liver function tests, such as liver enzymes, were also altered.
The degree of liver mast cell infiltration varied among a spectrum of mild to severe in the selected patients. Mast cell morphology was either spindled or monocytoid. Mast cells were also present in the biliary system and the portal system. The authors observed scarring tissue in four samples, and cirrhosis was not observed.
“This study is the first to have provided a detailed histological description of liver involvement in Adv-SM and to have assessed correlations between histological features on one hand and clinical and laboratory variables on the other hand,” the authors wrote.
