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do not suppress the host’s ability to clear a hepatic viral infection. J Virol 2001, 75: 11992–11998.CrossRefPubMed Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions TN and MG have made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, carried out the molecular genetic studies and drafted the manuscript. PG, CS and NS have carried out the immunoassays. RM participated in designing the study. FDM coordinated the study and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript content.”
“Background Bile mafosfamide is produced by the collective actions of a number of transporters located on the canalicular membrane of hepatocytes [1]. Active transport of biliary solutes creates

an osmotic force that attracts water through tight junctions and aquaporins in the hepatocyte membrane [2, 3]. Bile salts are the most important biliary solute. Other important solutes of bile include cholesterol and phospholipids. The presence of phospholipids, phosphatidylcholine (PC) in particular, in the biliary lumen is crucial for protecting the epithelial cell membranes lining the biliary system from the cytotoxic detergent actions of bile salts [3–5]. Bile salt cytotoxicity is substantially reduced in the presence of PC owing to the formation of mixed micelles (PC + bile salts) rather than simple micelles (bile salts only). Thus, a decrease in the amount of biliary PC leads to injury of epithelial cells lining the biliary system [6]. ABCB4 functions exclusively as a phospholipid translocator [6].