AASLD President's Press Conference for The Liver Meeting®, Saturday, November 10, 2012 - 4:00-5:00 pm, Room 313, Hynes Convention Center

BOSTON and Alexandria, Va., Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- AASLD President Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao, MD, will host a press conference on the first full day of presentations at The Liver Meeting®, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

Dr. Garcia-Tsao will highlight individual studies and themes from the 2047 abstracts to be presented at this year's meeting from the leading researchers in the field. She has selected to review 18 abstracts in advance of their actual presentation in scientific sessions for the benefit of the media:

• Active Ingredient Confusion for Acetaminophen-Containing Medications: A Cause of Double Dipping
• Prior Bariatric Surgery Increases the Risk of Acute Liver Failure from Acetaminophen Poisoning
• Maternal Obesity Promotes Offspring Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) through Disruption of Molecular Circadian Rhythms
• Survey of nongenetic risk factors suggests that tobacco exposure, coffee consumption, the use of oral contraception and the number of pregnancies could affect disease risk or presentation of primary sclerosing cholangitis
• High Prevalence of Cirrhosis in Young Children with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), Initial Report of the CF Liver Disease Network
• Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease without cirrhosis is an emergent and independent risk factor of hepatocellular carcinoma: A population based study
• Impact of liver fibrosis in development of hepatocellular carcinoma in HBeAg negative genotype D patients with chronic hepatitis B treated with nucleos(t)ide analogues
• Coffee Consumption in NAFLD Patients with Lower Insulin Resistance is Associated with Lower Risk of Severe Fibrosis
• The Stroop Smartphone App is a Short and Valid Screening Tool for Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy
• Randomized, controlled, double blind study of glycerol phenylbutyrate in patients with cirrhosis and episodic heaptic encephalopathy
• OPTIMIZE trial: Non-inferiority of twice-daily telaprevir versus administration every 8 hours in treatment-naive, genotype 1 HCV infected patients
• High Rate of Sustained Virologic Response with the All-Oral Combination of Daclatasvir (NS5A Inhibitor) Plus Sofosbuvir (Nucleotide NS5B Inhibitor), With or Without Ribavirin, in Treatment-Naive Patients Chronically Infected With HCV Genotype 1, 2, or 3
• A 12-Week Interferon-free Treatment Regimen with ABT-450/r, ABT-267, ABT-333 and Ribavirin Achieves SVR12 Rates (Observed Data) of 99% in Treatment-Naive Patients and 93% in Prior Null Responders with HCV Genotype1 Infection
• An Interferon-free, Ribavirin-free 12-Week Regimen of Daclatasvir (DCV), Asunaprevir (ASV), and BMS-791325 Yielded SVR4 of 94% in Treatment-Naive Patients with Genotype (GT) 1 Chronic Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection
• High Efficacy Of GS-7977 In Combination With Low or Full dose Ribavirin for 24 weeks In Difficult To Treat HCV Infected Genotype 1 Patients : Interim Analysis From The SPARE Trial
• Identification of a New Mechanism of Non-nucleoside Inhibition of HCV RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase by the Flavonoid Quercetagetin
• Randomized Controlled Phase 2 Study (RCT) with Tivantinib in pre-treated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC): Efficacy, Safety, and MET-analysis
• Developing an RNAi Therapeutic for Liver Disease Associated with Alpha-1-Antitrypsin Deficiency

About Dr. Garcia-Tsao
Dr. Garcia-Tsao is professor of internal medicine at Yale University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Connecticut Veterans Affairs Healthcare System where she is chief of the Section of Digestive Diseases and program director of the Hepatitis C Resource Center, one of four such centers nationwide. She is also director of the Clinical Core of the NIH-funded Liver Center at Yale.

Dr. Garcia-Tsao earned her medical degree from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City and completed her internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship at the Instituto Nacional de la Nutricion in Mexico City. She completed training in hepatology at Yale University and joined its faculty in 1989. She has published more than 100 original articles, chapters, and reviews. Dr. Garcia-Tsao's research has been mainly in the area of the complications of cirrhosis, specifically varices, variceal hemorrhage, ascites, spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, and hepatorenal syndrome. She was part of the research team that established the threshold portal pressure level for the development of varices, that performed the only placebo-controlled study of propranolol in the prevention of first variceal hemorrhage and that performed a study defining the cutoff ascites polymorphonuclear cell count in the diagnosis of SBP. Her research has also defined the clinical characteristics and outcome of liver vascular malformations in hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia.

She has served as a member of the NIDDK-C Study Section of NIH and served as associate editor of the Journal of Hepatology. She has been a member of various international consensus conference teams that have established current standards in the treatment of portal hypertension and its complications. She was a part of the team that prepared the recent AASLD/ACG guidelines for the management of varices and variceal hemorrhage. Dr. Garcia-Tsao has participated in many AASLD activities and committees. She has served as secretary, chaired the education oversight committee and the membership committee, and served as co-organizer of a research workshop and a single topic conference.

Founded in 1950, AASLD is the leading organization of scientists and health care professionals committed to preventing and curing liver disease. AASLD has grown into an international society responsible for all aspects of hepatology, and the annual meeting attracts 8,500 physicians, surgeons, researchers, and allied health professionals from around the world.

The Liver Meeting® is the premier meeting in the science and practice of hepatology, including the latest findings on new drugs, novel treatments, and the results from pilot and multicenter studies.

When: November 9 - 13, 2012

Where:
Hynes Convention Center
Boston, Massachusetts

Contact: Please click here to obtain a press pass for this event.

Press releases and all abstracts are available online at www.aasld.org.

Media Contact: Ann Haran
703/299-9766
[email protected]
Press Room: November 10 – November 13, 2012
Hynes Convention Center, Room 208

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SOURCE American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD)