Sequential Changes of Serum Aminotransferase Levels in Patients With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a newly emerging infectious disease. To describe the hepatic injury caused by this disease, we report the sequential changes of serum transaminase in probable SARS patients during a hospital outbreak in southern Taiwan. From April to June, 2003, 52 probable SARS patients were hospitalized. Serial serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels were retrospectively analyzed and hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) was also evaluated to correlate with the progression of this disease. Fifty-three percent of the patients had abnormal liver function during hospitalization. More than 70% of abnormal transaminase levels were mildly elevated. Most elevated levels were noted during the second week after onset of fever. Neither transaminase elevation nor HBsAg was related to the prognosis of SARS, and only advanced age was an independent predictor of poor outcome. Our study suggested that coronavirus causing SARS might induce liver damage.

Association of high viral load and abnormal liver function with high aflatoxin B1–albumin adduct levels in HIV-positive Ghanaians: preliminary observations

“…Several antiretrovirals have been shown to be associated with elevations in liver enzymes (Bonacini et al 2002). Indeed serum aminotransferases ALT and AST have been identified as useful markers of liver cell injury (Wu et al 2004). Lower plasma albumin levels indicate that the synthesis function of the liver is compromised in these HIV-positive participants.…”

Clinical significance of hepatic derangement in severe acute respiratory syndrome

“…Baseline ALT levels have not been found to be associated with any adverse clinical outcome in the past probably because of the delayed elevation of ALT levels in most patients. In fact most immunological damage of SARS in the lungs occurred in the second week of the illness [12,28] . The level of ALT elevation may reflect the severity of acute phase response, which in turn may reflect the severity of tissue damage in SARS [17] .…”

COVID-19, MERS and SARS with Concomitant Liver Injury—Systematic Review of the Existing Literature

“…Most of the studies (n = 35) [2,4,12,13,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]27,[30][31][32][33][35][36][37][38][40][41][42][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] were observational and retrospective. We extracted data from eleven (n = 11) English abstracts provided for Chinese articles [17,26,30,32,34,35,37,38,42,44,48] and for one (n = 1) commentary [19].…”