In general, ethanol-induced liver injury is modest in the typical Lieber-DeCarli diet, and fibrosis is not typically observed. This is confirmed by the lack of an increase in immunohistochemical detection of smooth muscle actin (SMA), a marker of hepatic stellate cell activation in liver from ethanol-fed WT mice, as well as the KO mice (Fig. 3C). However, some staining for SMA was observed in livers from the ethanol-fed KI mice (Fig. 3C). Immunohistochemical staining for collagen revealed thick bands of collagen throughout the liver of the ethanol-fed KI mice while in the WT and the KO mice, no positive staining for collagen in the liver itself was observed except for blood vessels (Fig 3D).
