This special issue of Progress in Medicine, issued on the 100^th Anniversary of the founding of the Polish Society of Gastroenterology, contains articles exclusively within the field of hepatology. Among 15 presented papers only 4 concern liver disease of viral etiology, which proves that the important branch of digestive system diseases that is hepatology does not restrict itself to viral hepatitides.

In the invited paper Professor Krzysztof Krawczynski, who used to work in the National Institute of Hygiene, and currently holds a prestigious post at the Centers for Disease Control in the USA, presents the current state of knowledge on hepatitis E and epidemiology and pathogenesis of infections of this virus. Let me take the opportunity to recall that the first ever description of a case of acute liver disease that from todays perspective might have been hepatitis E appeared in the 1920s in a Polish medical journal.

Bozena Walewska-Zielecka from the National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw presents in an original paper on hepatotropic viral infections the results of a study on detecting HCV antigens in liver tissue with immunomorphological techniques. These methods may be useful in diagnostics of HCV infections alongside molecular and serological tests.

In a paper from the Lublin, H. Cichoz-Lach et al. present a retrospective analysis of their material of patients with focal lesions in the liver. In most of the 1000 patients, determining the nature of the focal lesion was possible on the basis of imaging methods. Invasive diagnostic methods were necessary only in a small number of cases. In the second original paper from this centre the results of a study on nutritional status and quality of life of patients with alcoholic cirrhosis are presented. This paper deserves special attention because it raises psychosocial issues connected with alcoholic liver disease that are rarely investigated in Poland.

Supplementing the nutritional matters in hepatology presented in this issue is a review article on hepatological complications in patients fed enterally or parenterally written by B. Grygiel-Górniak and M. Grzymisławski from the Poznań, a leader in this field within Poland.

The original paper from the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Collegium Medicum Jagiellonian University on the role of transforming growth factor β1 in fibrosis progression in patients with chronic hepatitis in comparison with HBV and HCV infection, and with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and the review paper by B. Kasztelan-Szczerbińska et al. from the Lublin on the role of stellate cells in these processes provide the reader with a closer understanding of the issues of liver fibrosis, which seems to be the key morphological lesion responsible for the development of cirrhosis and its complications.

In the next paper from the Kraków, the authors present the current state of knowledge on fatty liver in hepatitis caused by HCV infection. They draw attention among other things to pathogenetic differences in the lipid disorders depending on genotype of the virus.

The role of the liver in systemic metabolic disorders is described in the review paper by A. Zwolak et al. The reader has the opportunity to become familiar with the present state of knowledge on pathogenesis of insulin resistance and mechanisms leading to fatty liver disease.

Remaining with the topic of fatty liver disease, attention should be drawn to the practical aspects of the publication by T. Mach on the treatment of hyperlipidaemia. In the Polish medical community there is a common belief in the danger of administering statin treatment to patients with hyperlipidaemia and elevated transaminase activity resulting from fatty liver. The author, on the basis of the recently published, shows the lack of such a risk.

From the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Immunology of the Children's Memorial Health Institute in Warsaw come two papers. In the first paper I. Jankowska et al. present diagnosis and treatment of Amanita phalloides poisoning. In the light of frequent mushroom poisonings in Poland this paper has particular practical significance. Meanwhile, A. Bakuła and P. Socha present the current state of knowledge on liver damage in α1-antitrypsin deficiency and include an analysis of the largest data set of Polish patients with this pathology.

A modern classification of iron overload syndromes is presented by I. Raszeja-Wyszomirska and P. Milkiewicz from Szczecin. The authors describe gene mutations that may be responsible for overload predisposing to clinical manifestation, and the role of hepcidin in these processes.

The paper by a group from the Department of Gastroenterology of the Silesian Medical University in cooperation with a British centre brings the reader closer to the rarely raised, though of great practical significance, issues of coagulation disorders in chronic liver diseases.

I recommend paying particular attention to the article by M. Krawczyk and U. Ołdakowska on hepatocellular carcinoma. The world epidemiological data show that in the coming years liver cancer will be one of the most frequent cancers. The principles of modern treatment of liver cancer presented by the authors should be very useful for all the readers.

Prof. dr hab. med. Andrzej Habior