The significance of bile secretion after the transplantation of long-preserved livers in the rat

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Abstract
Although one of the simplest indicators for predicting liver viability is bile secretion, it has never been proven whether it could be a good index for the viability of grafts in liver transplantation after cold ischemia. The present study, conducted on male Wistar rats, was undertaken to determine whether bile secretion reflects the viability of livers which have been preserved long-term. Livers were stored for up to 24 h in Euro-Collins (EC) or University of Wisconsin (UW) solution at 4°C, and transplanted orthotopically. The correlation between 1-week survival, bile flow, and the tissue adenosine triphosphate (ATP) level 4 h after transplantation was then investigated for each subgroup. The survival rates of the animals in the UW subgroups were much higher than those in the EC subgroups. In the rats transplanted with livers preserved for 6h in EC solution (EC-6), in which 100% survival was observed, both bile flow and ATP recovered sufficiently. Conversely, in the EC-12 group, in which only 10% survival was seen, restoration of bile flow, in ml/h per kg body weight, and ATP resynthesis, in pmol/g wet weight, were severely suppressed, with levels of 1.35 ± 1.05 and 0.77 ± 0.34, respectively. Moreover, in the EC-18 group, with 0% survival, neither bile flow nor ATP recovered. In the rats transplanted with livers preserved for 18h in UW solution (UW-18), bile flow and ATP, being 1.03 ± 0.56 and 1.12 ± 0.59, respectively, were much higher than those in the EC-18 group. A good correlation was found between bile flow and ATP (r = 0.84). The results of this study thus led us to conclude that bile secretion is a reliable index for predicting the viability of orthotopically transplanted grafts damaged by cold ischemia.