Portal pressure-lowering drugs efficiently decrease liver stiffness

Introduction: Liver stiffness (LS) measured by transient elastography (TE) is increasingly used to non-invasively assess liver fibrosis. Although LS highly correlates with portal pressure it still remains unresolved whether LS could serve as a non-invasive parameter to monitor the pharmacological efficiency of portal pressure-lowering drugs such as propranolol and others to prevent variceal bleeding. Methods: Thirty male Wistar rats were allocated into groups (n = 6) and fibrosis was induced with i.p. thioacetamide (TAA) injections (200 mg/kg bodyweight twice a week) for 8 weeks. Under isoflurane sedation, 1 ml…