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Objective: To investigate the etiology of 1977 patients from northern China with acute (ALF), sub-acute (SALF) or acute-on-chronic liver (ACLF) failures., Method: The age, gender, etiology, pathogenesis, and prognosis of the 1977 patients with liver failures were retrospectively analyzed., Results: Of the 1977 cases, the three most common causes of ALF were HEV (33.96%) or HBV (13.21%) infections or those caused by medicines (9.43%). The three predominant causes of SALF were medicines (31.53%), HEV (16.22%) or HBV (9.91%) infections, but those of the ACLF were HBV (90.29%) infection, alcoholic hepatopathy (2.65%), and HBV super infected with HEV (2.26%) infections. 90.09% (1781) patients were infected by hepatotropic viruses. Of these 1781 patients, the most common cause of their liver failures was HBV infection (92.93%). In these HBV infected patients, 77.10% were from 26 to 55 years old. From 2005 to 2007, there were 39 patients with alcoholic liver failure. In the past two years, there were 23 patients with drug induced liver failure. The improvement rate of the 1977 patients after their treatments was 35.56%. The improvement rate of HEV infected liver failure was higher than drug induced liver failure (P less than 0.05); no statistical significance was found between other groups (P more than 0.05)., Conclusion: Different types of liver failure have different predominant causes. HBV infection is the most common cause in our 1977 patients. In the past two years, the number of drug induced liver failures and alcoholic liver failures have been increasing.

Objective: Drug-induced liver damage is a potential complication from using many drugs. The aim of our study was to analyze the etiology and clinical features of drug-induced liver damage, in order to draw more attention to this problem., Methods: Two hundred and seventy-six cases over a 5-year period in Jiangsu Province Hospital were retrospectively analyzed., Results: A variety of drugs, including traditional Chinese medicines (26.1% of our total cases) and anticancer drugs (17%) caused liver damage. The main clinical manifestations of it were fatigue, nausea, vomiting and jaundice. In 88% of our cases the symptoms were relieved or completely disappeared, but there was still a 5.1% mortality rate., Conclusions: The clinical features of drug-induced liver damage are of no specificity, and the mortality of it is not low. Liver function should be monitored when suspected drugs are prescribed.