Drug Resistance in Liver Diseases

Currently, many liver-associated diseases are being cured by a variety of drugs. In this chapter, some of the infectious liver diseases have been addressed where the development of resistance against certain therapeutic drugs has already been reported. Some of these diseases are hepatocellular carcinoma, hepatitis B, and infectious liver cirrhosis. Another disease “liver abscess” with an unexplored drug resistance mechanism has also been revealed along with multidrug resistance (MDR) of human hepatocarcinoma cells. Drugs, for instance, Cholchicine, Actinomycin D, Ectoposide, Doxorubicin, and Vinblastin have been experimentally assessed for their resistance against five human hepatoma cell lines. Some of these drugs have more resistance while others exhibit less. In course of hepatitis B, the resistance against different nucleic acids (NAs) has been depicted. This resistance may induce severe liver complications and carcinoma. In the course of liver cirrhosis, sufferers are highly receptive to bacterial infections which provoke acute complexities in cirrhosis. To address this problem mainly antibiotics are used, but multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) trigger resistance against some of these drugs. Antibiotic resistance such as Carbapenem has been notified in Enterobacteriaceae species when this drug was used to cure liver cirrhosis. Moreover, the drug rifaximin has been proven to be efficacious in inhibiting spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) in cirrhosis.