Während der durch das ,Marburg-Virus' verursachten Epidemie starben in Marburg fünf Patienten. Uber das Ergebnis der Autopsien und der bisher vorgenommenen feingeweblichen Untersuchungen soll im folgenden berichtet werden. Dabei möchten wir uns in dieser ersten Mitteilung nur auf die wesentlichen, mit der Krankheit direkt oder indirekt in Zusammenhang stehenden Veränderungen beschrän-ken1.Um einen Einblick in die formale Genese und den Ablauf der morphologischen Veränderungen zu gewinnen, haben wir die Fälle nach der Erkrankungsdauer, das heißt nach der Zeitdauer, die zwischen den ersten klinischen Symptomen und dem Eintritt des Todes verstrichen war, eingeteilt.

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After previous reports on alterations of the liver among polyvinyl chloride production workers," ' we now have a survey of 51 patients who were exposed to vinyl chloride for different long periods and were controlled clinically and by biopsies in different intervals after the last exposure.In contrast to the impressive macroscopical and endoscopical findings, the histological alterations of the liver were, in most cases, rather discrete and unspecific. With the material at our disposal (51 cases) we were able to classify the histological findings into 5 groups (TABLE 1).First, there were degenerative changes of the liver parenchyma such as a hydropic degeneration of hepatocytes in increasing severity, e.g. , a toxic swelling of hepatocytes with granulary cytoplasm (cloudy swelling) progressing to vacuolar degeneration, occasionally even to a ballooning of the cells (FIGURE 1). Further, we found focal cytoplasmic degeneration sometimes mimicking Mallory bodies. Eosinophilic single cell necroses appeared in advanced cases (FIGURES 1 and 3a). These toxic lesions of the cytoplasm were localized in sharply delimited areas of the lobules (FIGURE 1). The pressure exerted by the areas of toxically swollen hepatocytes seems to cause some kind of pressure atrophy on the surrounding parenchyma.In about half of the cases we observed a slight to moderate disseminated fatty degeneration of medium to large sized fat vacuoles. The distribution pattern and the size of the fat vacuoles corresponded to the type of fatty change produced by different toxic injuries, alcohol being included. In no cases have TABLE 1 LIVER DAMAGE AFTER EXPOSURE TO VINYL CHLORIDE

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