In Germany, as many as five million people suffer from liver diseases. The liver is a resilient and complex organ which we do not understand enough even in its basic functioning. A team at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo) is now providing fundamentally new insights into the function of the liver to produce bile and transport it through ‘canaliculi’: According to the study, there is a stagnant liquid in these canaliculi and the constituents of bile move in this standing liquid primarily by diffusion. These findings overturn long-standing assumptions about how the liver secretes bile. They are published in the journal “Hepatology”.
Continue reading →
