AA and liver failure
 

Hey all, my name is Brian, I'm 26, and I am new to the forum although I've been reading and gaining encouragement from it for some time. Last month I underwent a MUD BMT at the City of Hope and to this point am doing very well. But as I sit here on this side of transplant it's kind of fun (kind of) to put the pieces together from the past crazy year. It all began last July when I had a week of upper right quadrant pressure and increasing depression. Eventually when my eyes and skin began to turn yellow I decided to go to the ER. My ALT was well above 2000 and after a litany of tests it showed I was a complete mystery. Some would call is seronegative autoimmune hepatitis, but after seeing many hepatologist on this as my platelets began to fall some said there was no markers for this and that it was toxic. Either way we never got a complete answer and probably will never know. My question is does anyone else with AA have a history of liver problems? Thank you much!

Not as such however I am not totally confident that mine isnt something to do with the liver...the reason....
up until about 7 years ago my blood results were always normal. Then as I was fast approaching 50 my GP said she would give me an MOT, when the results came back she said everything was normal except my bilirubin level which was very high, but not to worry as it was probably genetic and that I had something which I cant recall the name of now, but that it wasn't anything to be concerned about just that if i got stressed or ill I would find the whites of my eyes go yellow and my skin might too.......I didn't worry and carried on with my life until a couple of years later i 2010....when I became unwell and got diagnosed with VSAA. Coincidence? I will never know.

Thanks for the information. I don't know if I'm the only one (probably not) who tries to think of things that I did which could have caused this. I know that I read somewhere that 2% of AA patients had viral hepatitis, so I was just wondering if there is any more of a correlation with liver problems in general. I'm +38 today and last week we found out that my ALT and AST were getting kind of high, so we hope that the appointment tomorrow shows that the numbers have evened out.

Back in Oct 2011 I had high AST and ALT 900 and 350. Then in Nov I developed what was eventually diagnosed as reactive arthritis. I also had what was thought to be a gall bladder attack on Dec 22. I then began to loose platelet counts beginning in Jan 2012. platelets were125, 117, 50, 30. Now I have SAA and had ATG treatment in the beginning of April. So theshort answer for me is it seems possible that there is a link.

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like you have had a very active immune system. Did you have many allergies before, or any other autoimmune problems?

Hi Brian,

When my son was getting his BMT for AA, there was a boy in the next isolation room recovering from his BMT. His AA presented a few weeks after he suddenly, like over the course of 2 days, became jaundiced and his liver seemed to be failing. He was diagnosed with auto-immune hepatitis which did lead to his auto-immune AA. Both were cured with his BMT.

Best wishes,

Nicole