Portal hypertension in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC): A reversible condition? Yes, but not in all UDCA treated patients.

Portal hypertension is not a rare complication of PBC, but there are no useful clinical predictors of its severity. In fact, in PBC patients, the evaluation of portal hypertension needs a direct access to the portal vein in order to measure the real porto-hepatic gradient (PHG), mainly because of a possible pre-sinusoidal component. The severity of portal hypertension, as measured by the PHG using a thin needle, correlated significantly with the long-term survival of PBC patients, but the initial Mayo score remained the best predictor of survival. In addition to the well-known effects on biological parameters, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) treatment has been associated with a stabilization or improvement of portal hypertension but this effect was not observed in all patients: "responders" and "non-responders" to the UDCA could be identified according to changes in PHG and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels observed 2 years after UDCA therapy and had significantly different long-term survivals. This notion of "responders" and "non-responders" is new and may well explain the conflicting data found in the literature concerning the effects of UDCA in PBC patients as reported in various clinical trials. These findings are of interest when considering the emerging non-invasive methods aimed at evaluating liver fibrosis, particularly elastography that may prove useful in the indirect assessment of portal hypertension in the near future, therefore avoiding the need for the invasive measurement of the PHG.