Technetium 99m diethylenetriaminepentaacetic
acid-galactosyl
human serum albumin is a newly developed analog
ligand to
asialoglycoprotein receptor, which is a hepatic cell surface receptor specific for
galactose-terminated
glycoproteins. Hepatic functional imaging, which yields estimates of
asialoglycoprotein receptor concentration, was performed after
intravenous injection of 3 mg
technetium 99m diethylenetriaminepentaacetic
acid-galactosyl
human serum albumin. A total of 75 human subjects were studied: 6 controls without
liver diseases, 51 patients with chronic
liver diseases and 18 patients with acute
liver diseases. In chronic
liver disease the
asialoglycoprotein receptor concentration significantly correlated with the clinical severity based on the criteria of the
Liver Cancer Study Group of Japan (rs = -0.890, p = 0.0001). Good correlations between the
asialoglycoprotein receptor concentration and conventional liver function tests were also observed. In acute
liver disease the
asialoglycoprotein receptor concentration correlated well with the normotest (r = 0.796, p = 0.0001), prothrombin time (r = 0.701, p = 0.0002) and total serum
bilirubin (r = -0.642, p = 0.0007). We conclude that the parameter,
asialoglycoprotein receptor concentration, obtained from the kinetic analysis of
technetium 99m diethylenetriaminepentaacetic
acid-galactosyl
human serum albumin time-activity data, is a sensitive measure of functioning hepatocyte mass in acute and chronic
liver disease.