Plethora of evidence suggests that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was likely to result in liver injury. Nevertheless, few current studies also demonstrated the effect of COVID-19 on liver function in patients with chronic liver diseases. The goal of the present study is to appraise a case series of COVID-19 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.

The investigators included confirmed hospitalized COVID-19 patients from hospitals in 10 cities of a province in China, between 18 January 2020 and 26 February 2020. Their medical records showed Demographic information, epidemiologic data, clinical features, and treatment data. The study comprised of seven COVID-19 patients with chronic HBV infection. Among these, six (85.7%) patients were male and aged from 33 to 49 years.

The outcome showed that two patients had HBV-related cirrhosis and one patient (14.3%) was positive for serum HBV e-antigen. Out of these, one (14.3%) patient had mildly elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level (>40 U/L) and one (14.3%) had elevated aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level (>40 U/L) on admission. However, all patients were discharged as of 29 February 2020. Furthermore, none of the patient was admitted to the intensive care units or developed liver failure during hospitalization.

Thus, the case series showed that the abnormalities of liver function are a frequent finding in COVID-19 patients with chronic HBV infection. Nevertheless, none of the patient developed severe liver-related complications during hospitalization.

Source: J Med Virol. 2020 Nov;92(11):2785-2791.