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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Oct 27, 2025; 17(10): 109575
Published online Oct 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i10.109575
Published online Oct 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i10.109575
Acute liver failure caused by alkaloids from traditional Chinese medicine: A case report
Xuan-Yi Zhu, Yi-Teng Zhao, Chun-Sheng Su, Department of Graduate School, Bengbu Medical University, Bengbu 233000, Anhui Province, China
Xuan-Yi Zhu, Yi-Teng Zhao, Chun-Sheng Su, Xiao-Dong Yuan, Shu-Geng Zhang, Björn Nashan, Department of Liver Transplantation, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Division of Life Science and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230000, Anhui Province, China
Co-corresponding authors: Shu-Geng Zhang and Björn Nashan.
Author contributions: Zhu XY drafted the manuscript; Zhu XY, Zhao YT, and Su CS collected and obtained the data; Zhu XY, Zhang SG, and Nashan B analyzed and expounded on the data; Zhu XY and Nashan B designed the study; Yuan XD verified the data; Zhang SG provided a material foundation; Yuan XD, Zhang SG, and Nashan B reviewed and revised the manuscript; Zhang SG and Nashan B contributed equally to this manuscript and are co-corresponding authors. All authors approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Anhui Provincial Department of Education, No. 2022AH020077.
Informed consent statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China, and was compliant with the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki (No. 2025-RE-135). The patient provided a signed informed consent form before inclusion in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Björn Nashan, Professor, Department of Liver Transplantation, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Division of Life Science and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hezeji Street, Shushan District, Hefei 230000, Anhui Province, China. bjoern.nashan@gmail.com
Received: May 19, 2025
Revised: July 11, 2025
Accepted: September 19, 2025
Published online: October 27, 2025
Processing time: 163 Days and 22.8 Hours
Revised: July 11, 2025
Accepted: September 19, 2025
Published online: October 27, 2025
Processing time: 163 Days and 22.8 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This case report presents a patient who suffered from liver damage due to the intake of alkaloid-containing traditional Chinese medicine and eventually achieved good therapeutic outcomes through liver transplantation. It explores the clinical diagnosis of liver damage caused by alkaloid hepatotoxic drugs and the appropriate timing for liver trans