Cirrhosis is a late stage of scarring (fibrosis) of the liver caused by many forms of liver diseases and conditions, such as hepatitis and chronic alcoholism. The following data contains the information collected from the Mayo Clinic trial in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) of the liver conducted between 1974 and 1984. A description of the clinical background for the trial and the covariates recorded here is in Chapter 0, especially Section 0.2 of Fleming and Harrington, Counting
Processes and Survival Analysis, Wiley, 1991. A more extended discussion can be found in Dickson, et al., Hepatology 10:1-7 (1989) and in Markus, et al., N Eng J of Med 320:1709-13 (1989).
A total of 424 PBC patients, referred to Mayo Clinic during that ten-year interval, met eligibility criteria for the randomized placebo-controlled trial of the drug D-penicillamine. The first 312 cases in the dataset participated in the randomized trial and contain largely complete data. The additional 112 cases did not participate in the clinical trial but consented to have basic measurements recorded and to be followed for survival. Six of those cases were lost to follow-up shortly after diagnosis, so the data here are on an additional 106 cases as well as the 312 randomized participants.
