This PA, Liver and Biliary Diseases Among Women and Minorities, is related to the priority area of chronic disabling diseases. Applicant will be responsible for the planning, direction, and execution of the proposed project. Applications submitted in response to this PA will compete for funds with other regular research project grant applications. If so, a letter of agreement from either the GCRC program director or principal investigator should be included with the application. The award of grants in response to this PA is also contingent upon the availability of funds.
Some liver diseases occur only in women and others are more frequent in women than men.
Specific to women are the liver diseases of pregnancy such as acute fatty liver of pregnancy, cholestasis of pregnancy and liver disease associated with pre-eclampsia, hepatic infarction and rupture. Also, management of liver disease may present specific problems in women, for instance the influence of estrogen replacement therapy on the natural history of liver disease and the management of osteoporosis in women with liver disease, and other risk factors such as illicit drug abuse. The role of gender and sex hormones in the pathogenesis of liver and biliary disease is not well known. The nature of liver diseases that are adversely effected by female sex indicate that female sex hormones influence hepatic energy production and utilization, liver cell proliferation, lipid intermediary metabolism, and immunomodulatory responses. In addition, the hepatocyte is rich in receptors for sex-hormones.