The liver produces about 500 to 600 mL of bile each day. Bile is isosmotic with plasma and consists primarily of water and electrolytes but also organic compounds: bile salts, phospholipids (mostly lecithin), cholesterol, bilirubin, and other endogenously produced or ingested compounds, such as proteins that regulate GI function and drugs or their metabolites. Bilirubin is a degradation product of heme compounds from worn-out RBCs and is the pigment that gives bile its yellow-green color.

Bile salts (bile acids) are the major organic component in bile. The liver uses active transport to secrete bile salts into the canaliculus, the cleft between adjacent hepatocytes. Canalicular transport is the rate-limiting step in bile formation. Once secreted, bile salts draw other bile components (particularly Na⁺ and water) into the canaliculus by osmosis. Bile salts are also biologic detergents that enable the body to excrete cholesterol and potentially toxic compounds (eg, bilirubin, drug metabolites). The function of bile salts in the duodenum is to solubilize ingested fat and fat-soluble vitamins, facilitating their digestion and absorption. From the liver, bile flows from the intrahepatic collecting system into the right or left hepatic duct, then into the common hepatic duct.

During fasting, about 75% of the bile secreted passes from the common hepatic duct into the gallbladder via the cystic duct. The rest flows directly into the common bile duct (formed by the junction of the common hepatic and cystic ducts) into the duodenum. During fasting, the gallbladder absorbs up to 90% of bile water, concentrating and storing bile.

Bile empties from the gallbladder into the common bile duct. The common bile duct joins with the pancreatic duct to form the ampulla of Vater, which empties into the duodenum. Before joining the pancreatic duct, the common bile duct tapers to a diameter of ≤ 0.6 cm.

The sphincter of Oddi, which surrounds both the pancreatic duct and the common bile duct, includes a sphincter for each duct. Bile does not normally flow retrograde into the pancreatic duct. These sphincters are highly sensitive to cholecystokinin and other gut hormones (eg, gastrin-releasing peptide) and to alterations in cholinergic tone (eg, by anticholinergic drugs).

Eating releases gut hormones and stimulates cholinergic nerves, causing the gallbladder to contract and the sphincter of Oddi to relax. As a result, the gallbladder empties 50 to 75% of its contents into the duodenum. Conversely, during fasting, an increase in sphincter tone facilitates gallbladder filling.

Bile salts are poorly absorbed by passive diffusion in the proximal small bowel; most intestinal bile salts reach the terminal ileum, which actively absorbs 90% into the portal venous circulation. Returned to the liver, bile salts are efficiently extracted, promptly modified (eg, conjugated if they arrive in the free form), and secreted back into bile. Bile salts circulate through this pathway from liver to gut to liver—the enterohepatic circulation—10 to 12 times/day.

Last full review/revision December 2007 by Eldon A. Shaffer, MD