Gallstones cholesterol-induced

There are multiple ways by which an increase in the percentage DCA in bile may pre-dispose to cholesterol gallstone formation. Carulli et al. showed that DCA-rich bile induces biliary cholesterol hyper-secretion when compared with other bile acids (Graph 8.6). This is likely to be due to the greater hydro-phobicity and detergent efiect of DCA, which would be able to solubilise the lipids in the canalicular cell wall more readily. It may well explain why there have been linear relationships demonstrated between the percentage DCA in bile and (i) the mole percentage cholesterol and (ii) the cholesterol saturation index in bile. This may also explain why there is a link between the... 

Early studies on the composition of cholestanol-induced gallstones established that they did not contain appreciable amounts of sterol (cholesterol or cholestanol) or pigment but consisted largely of glycine-conjugated bile salts (130,133,139,140). Mosbach and Bevans (139), utilizing cholestanol-14C, demonstrated that approximately half of the bile acids in the stones were... 

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