Pathological features of biopsy in autoimmune liver disease: a report of 109 cases.

Autoimmune liver disease (AILD) is a group of hepatobiliary diseases and of autoimmune abnormalities, which includes autoimmune hepatitis (AIH, featured by hepatic parenchymal cell injury), primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC, featured by intrahepatic small bile duct injury and cholestasis) primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC, characterized by major bile duct injury and cholestasis) and overlap syndrome (OS) that has characteristics of both AIH and PBC or PSC. In the early stage, clinical manifestations of each type of AILD is not obvious, and diagnosis is mainly based on the biochemistry, immunology, imaging and pathological features. Therefore, liver biopsy has important clinical value for the diagnosis of AILD and evaluation of the severity and prognosis. In this study, pathological characteristics of 109 cases of AILD patients were retrospectively analyzed.