A Systematic Review on Use of Liver Function Tests to Assess Association between Liver Injury and COVID 19 Disease

Abstract

BACKGROUND: As at 27th of June 2020, the COVID 19 pandemic had affected 9,653,048 people across the world including 491,128 deaths. We reviewed different studies on liver function tests in COVID 19 patients to better understand how the liver injury is associated with COVID 19 disease. METHODS: A review of the literature was carried out between18th May and 10thJune 2020 on the studies that investigated liver function tests in COVID 19 patients as a marker of liver injury in the patients. The databases used were Pubmed/Medline, Google Scholar and JSTOR and the search protocol involves a combination of words like laboratory diagnosis, liver function tests and COVID 19, SARS-COV-2 and coronavirus. RESULT: Twelve relevant articles were identified out of a total of 212 articles that were initially identified after duplicates were removed. The twelve articles reviewed comprise of 1,926 COVID 19 infected patients representing 1,003(52.1%) males and 923(47.9%) females. Comparing mild to severe cases of COVID 19, the most prevalent laboratory findings were increased AST (100%), ALT (91.7%) and total bilirubin (71.4%), as well as 100%, decreased serum level of albumin. CONCLUSION: Liver injury is associated with COVID 19 as evident with observed changes in serum levels of liver enzymes, bilirubin and albumin in these individuals.