Experimental alcoholic hepatitis: a new primate model.

Research into the pathogenesis of alcoholic cirrhosis has suffered from the lack of an animal model of alcoholic hepatitis, considered by many to be the link between alcoholic fatty liver and cirrhosis. The entire constellation of histologic features characteristic of alcoholic hepatitis has been produced for the first time in baboons by administration of ethanol with a nutritionally adequate diet. This includes fat, necrosis. inflammation, alcoholic hyaline, fibrosis, and central hyaline sclerosis.