Recent years have seen an increasing number of supposedly active drugs for the treatment of chronic liver diseases, e.g. ursodeoxycholate for treatment of cholestatic conditions and alpha-interferon for the treatment of chronic viral hepatitis. However, in all controlled studies, hard end-points such as survival or need for transplantation often cannot be obtained, owing to the prolonged course of chronic liver diseases up to the time of hepatic decompensation and death. Therefore, surrogate markers for the different conditions are sorely needed in order to assess the value of these novel treatment modalities.
This book, the proceedings of an International Falk Workshop held in Basel, Switzerland, October 23-24, 1995, aims to define surrogate markers and to evaluate critically those frequently used in randomized clinical trials. Surrogate markers considered include different old and new serum markers of chronic liver disease, scores, liver biopsy and quantitative liver function tests. Thus, the book will be of interest to clinicians concerned with prognostication and/or involved in clinical trials, clinical epidemiologists, members of governmental drug licensing agencies, and clinical research directors and their collaborators in the pharmaceutical industry.