However with treatment, the need for transplantation in symptomatic PBC patients varies from 7 to 15 years depending the progression of disease. I noticed that the doctor initially narrowed in on my diagnosis because of the miticondrial antibodies in my blood test and when I was searching for info on the drug Carnitine that PBC patients are talking about, I kept connecting with sites related to miticondrial disease. A recent electron microscopy study reported that mitochondria are more numerous and swollen in PBC patients than controls but I have yet to see the evidence from these studies. It is also possible that the anti-mitochondrial antibodies damage the bile duct cell's mitochondria but there is no formal proof of this. With regard to carnitine, this is an essential factor that your mitochondria use for energy metabolism.
Some patients take carnitine as a dietary supplement with liver disease.