The Bile Juice Hexosamine Concentration in Patients with Biliary Tract Stones

Abstract

Pigment stones represent the majority of biliary stones in Oriental people in contrast to Western people. In order to evaluate the role of mucin in the pathogenesis of bile duct stones, the concentration of hexosamine in the bile juice (collected from various bile duct catheters) from 65 patients with biliary tract stones and 5 normal control subjects was determined by the Boa's modification of Elson and Morgan reaction. On analysis of the hexosamine concentration of the bile samples collected when the serum bilirubin concentration was normal, the mean value of hexosamine of patient with IHD stone (99.4±33.5μg/ml, n=20) was significantly higher than that in the patients with gallbladder stone (66.3±10.3μg/ml, n=l0) and that in the patients with the common bile duct stone (69.4±21.5μg/ml, n=29). The same difference was also noted on the analysis of the bile samples collected on the 7-10th postoperative day. These findings suggest that 1, The method of bile sampling does not affect the result of hexosamine analysis; 2, Some differences exist between the pathogenesis of the extrahepatic biliary stones and the intrahepatic duct stones. Mucin glycoproteins may contribute more to the formation of intrahepatic duct stones than to the other two types of biliary stone.