Treatment with piperine abolished these effects successfully and resulted in significantly elevated liver expression level of smad-7 with 3.1 folds compared to the fibrosis group and suppression of the expression levels of smad-3 and TGF-β1 by 40.9 and 49.4% compared to the fibrosis group (Figures 3A,C,D). The gene discussed is SMAD3; the disease is fibrosis.