A liver mass was incidentally revealed in a 10-year-old male neutered Himalayan cat on radiographic examination conducted in a local animal hospital. The abdominal distention had worsened over the past five months, along with intermittent vomiting and nausea for two weeks. Serum chemistry was unremarkable, except for elevated alkaline phosphatase and gamma-glutamyl transferase levels. Radiography revealed a round-shaped soft mass in the cranial abdomen. Abdominal ultrasonography showed a well defined, massive, fluid-filled cyst with multiple lobes, and heterogeneous echogenicity in the pancreas. Computed tomography examination revealed hypoplasia of the left lobes of the liver, but the vascular changes and enhancement of the mass were not observed on contrast computed tomography images. The herniation of the abdominal fat through the diaphragm was incidentally observed on sonography and computed tomography scan. The patient was tentatively diagnosed with pancreatic cyst. The laparotomy revealed that the origin was not related to the pancreas, but was suspended from the liver. The mass was multilobular and filled with approximately 120 ml of fluid containing a few white blood cells. The patient recovered from anesthesia, but showed postoperative respiratory depression and died of cardiac arrest 15 hours later. Histopathologically, the mass was definitively diagnosed to be hepatic cellular carcinoma.

Aralia cordata (A. cordata), which belongs to Araliaceae, is a perennial herb widely distributed in East Asia. We evaluated the anti-inflammatory effect of stems (AC-S), roots (AC-R) and leaves (AC-L) extracted with 100% methanol of A. cordata and elucidated the potential signaling pathway in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. The AC-L showed a strong anti-inflammatory activity through inhibition of NO production. AC-L dose-dependently inhibited NO production by suppressing iNOS, COX-2 and IL-β expression in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. AC-L inhibited the degradation and phosphorylation of IκB-α, which donated to the inhibition of p65 nuclear accumulation and NF-κB activation. Furthermore, AC-L suppressed the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and p38. These results suggested that AC-L may utilize anti-inflammatory activity by blocking NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathway and indicated that the AC-L can be used as a natural anti-inflammatory drugs.