Abstract： Objective To investigate the effect of magnesium isoglycyrrhizinate in treatment of alcoholic hepatitis.Methods Eighty patients were randomly divided into treatment group(n =40)and control group(n =40). Patients in the treatment group were given magnesium isoglycyrrhizinate 150 mg and polyene phosphatidylcholine 10 ml once everyday.Patients in the control group were given reduced glutathione 1.8 g and polyene phosphatidylcholine 10 ml once everyday.The Course was 2-3 weeks.Changes of clinical manifestations,biochemical and immunological indexes were observed.Results Patients in both groups showed therapeutic effect with statistical significance(P ＜ 0.05).After treatment,the degree of biochemical indicators declined significantly in the treatment group than that of the control group(P ＜ 0.05).The total effective rate of the treatment group was significantly higher than that of control group [87.5％(35/40)vs 70.0％(28/40)].Conclusion The result shows that magnesium isoglycyrrhizinate and reduced glutathione are effective drugs for controlling inflammation activity of the alcoholic hepatitis and magnesium isoglycyrrhizinate is a more effective and safer agent than reduced glutathione.