Objective China has the biggest population of commonly encountered liver diseases , so hepatology resear-ches are of great importance to human health .In order to comprehensively collect/organize and effectively share/display liv-er physiopathology knowledge scattered around databases and literature , a Human Liver Disease Ontology ( HuLDO ) is built and applied in many ways .Methods HuLDO systematically classified and annotated various human liver diseases based on extensive cross mapping and integration of several authoritative nomenclatures of diseases and two monographs of hepatology .Results In the present version , HuLDO encompassed knowledge of 227 human liver diseases and was enriched by plenty of synonyms,definitions, descriptions, references, and logical or pathological relations between different disea-ses.Compared with other existing nomenclatures , HuLDO extended far beyond them in the scope of liver diseases .Several applications of HuLDO in database construction , knowledge collection and text mining were also described .Conclusion HuLDO offers a sound basis for knowledge mining , data integration and data analysis in the field of hepatology .HuLDO is publicly available at ftp://liveratlas.hupo.org.cn/5.liver 5.liver%20Disease%20Ontology/.

Objective To investigate the pathological characteristics of bile duct tumor thrombi (BDTT) and its inlfuence on the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after surgical treatments. Methods Clinical data of 26 patients with HCC and BDTT (23 males, 3 females, age ranging from 23 to 78 years old and the median age of 52 years old) who underwent hepatectomy in Department of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University from June 2007 to June 2012 were analyzed retrospectively. The informed consents of all patients were obtained and the ethical committee approval was received. The surgical procedures included regular hepatectomy (n=12), irregular hepatectomy (n=14). The treatments for BDTT included bile duct thrombectomy (n=13), extrahepatic bile duct resection (n=8), combined resection of BDTT and tumor (n=5). The pathological characteristics of BDTT were observed and its correlation with tumor recurrence was analyzed. The comparison of rates was conducted by Fisher's exact probability test. Results Two cases of pure small microscopic BDTT and 24 cases of big macroscopic BDTT (14 cases were combined with pure small microscopic BDTT) were observed. According to the Satoh's BDTT clinical classiifcation, there were 3 cases of typeⅠ, and 21 cases of type Ⅱin 24 cases of big macroscopic BDTT. In all 26 cases of BDTT, sub-epithelium spreading along the bile duct wall was observed in 23 cases, most of which were small microscopic BDTT or big macroscopic BDTT. Intraductal spreading was rare and was observed mostly at the end part of big macroscopic BDTT. During the follow-up, intrahepatic tumor recurrence was observed in 10 cases, in which 8 cases were combined with BDTT recurrence. The intrahepatic tumor recurrence rate was 3/9 in patients after regular hepatectomy, and was 58%(7/12) in patients after irregular hepatectomy. In the 13 cases receiving bile duct thrombectomy, 7 cases suffered from BDTT recurrence with the recurrence rate of 54%(7/13). In the 8 cases receiving extrahepatic bile duct resection, 1 case suffered from BDTT recurrence with the recurrence rate of 1/8, where signiifcant difference was observed (P<0.05). Conclusions BDTT of HCC includes macroscopic BDTT and microscopic BDTT. BDTT spreads mostly in sub-epithelium along the bile duct wall. Tumor recurrence rate may be reduced and the outcome may be improved by surgical treatments of regular hepatectomy combined with extrahepatic bile duct resection.