Corticosteroid (CS) therapy was conducted to confirm its clinical efficacy in patients with chronic active liver disease in comparison with non-treated patients. Twenty-six patients who received CS were compared with 37 non-treated patients and there existed no valiance in the clinical, functional and morphological characteristics of the patients between the two group. The patients who entered in the study were under our control during from 2 months to 9 years. They received liver function test

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... once a month and liver biopsy under laparoscopy twice or more during the study. Prednisolon as CS was administered in initial dose of 30mg/day and then the daily dose was weekly decreased by 10 to 5mg. Finally the patients received 5mg a day or every the other day as maintenance dose. CS group was significantly improved as compared with non-treated group in the results of liver function tests (0.05>P>0.02), in suppression of inflammatory cell reaction in the morphological feature (p< 0.01) and in prevention of the progress of fibrosis (0.05 >P>0.02). Because of the long term corticosteroid therapy though in small dosage, some side effects were suspected to occur but they were clinically slight and few, and the increase of fatty infiltration in the liver cells was also slight. The efficacy of CS to HBs Ag negative patients was better than that to HBsAg positive patients.