Genetic cholestasis: Clinical and laboratory features.

Source: PubMed, NCBI / U.S. National Library of Medicine

In recent years, access to high-performance genetic techniques has allowed new diagnoses to become evident, allowing us to say today that genetic causes represent more than one-third of the etiologies of cholestasis in newborns and infants. When faced with a pediatric patient with cholestasis, with similar clinical and biochemical findings, an early genetic diagnosis will facilitate specific treatment, delay or exclude invasive diagnostic procedures (for example, liver biopsy), and offer genetic counseling to the family. We recently published a classification of genetic cholestasis, considering how the molecular defect affects biliary secretion. In this opportunity, we briefly summarize each of them to facilitate their identification by the pediatrician, who is the first professional to detect them and promptly refer them to a high-complexity center.