The summaries are free for public
use. The Chronic Liver Disease
Foundation will continue to add and
archive summaries of articles deemed
relevant to CLDF by the Board of
Trustees and its Advisors.
Abstract Details
NAFLD and COVID-19: a Pooled Analysis
SN Compr Clin Med. 2020 Nov 6;1-4. doi: 10.1007/s42399-020-00631-3. Online ahead of print.
Sonali Sachdeva1, Harshwardhan Khandait2, Jonathan Kopel3, Mark M Aloysius4, Rupak Desai5, Hemant Goyal4
Author information
1Department of Medicine, Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, India.
2Department of Medicine, Government Medical College, Nagpur, India.
3Department of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX USA.
4The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, Scranton, PA USA.
5Division of Cardiology, Atlanta VA Medical Center, 1670 Clairmont Rd, Decatur, GA 30033 USA.
Abstract
The earliest evidence from China suggested that COVID-19 patients are even more vulnerable to succumbing from complications in the presence of a multimorbid status, including metabolic syndrome. Due to ongoing metabolic abnormalities, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) appears to be a potential risk factor for contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection and developing related complications. This is because of the interplay of chronically active inflammatory pathways in NAFLD- and COVID-19-associated acute cytokine storm. The risk of severe disease could also be attributed to compromised liver function as a result of NAFLD. We systematically reviewed current literature to ascertain the relationship between NAFLD and severe COVID-19, independent of obesity, which is considered the major factor risk factor for both NAFLD and COVID-19. We found that NAFLD is a predictor of severe COVID-19, even after adjusting for the presence of obesity (OR 2.358; 95% CI: 1.902-2.923, p < 0.001).