AUTHOR=Zhou You , Ge Yu-Tong , Yang Xiao-Xi , Cai Qian , Ding Yan-Bing , Hu Liang-Hao , Lu Guo-Tao 

TITLE=Prevalence and Outcomes of Pancreatic Enzymes Elevation in Patients With COVID-19: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.865855

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.865855

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Background: Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is considered to be a disease that mainly involves the respiratory system, an increasing number of studies have reported that COVID-19 patients had pancreatic enzymes (PE) elevation and even pancreatic injury. The study aims to determine the prevalence of PE elevation, and the relationship between elevated PE and prognosis in COVID-19 patients.
Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted according to the PRISMA guideline in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar for studies reporting PE elevation in patients with COVID-19 from 1st January 2020 to 24th November 2021.
Results: A total of 13 studies (24353 participants) were included in our review. The pooled prevalence of PE elevation in COVID-19 patients was 24% (18%-31%), the pooled odds ratio (OR) of mortality was 2.5 (1.7-3.6), the pooled OR of ICU admission was 4.4 (2.8-6.8), and the pooled OR of kidney injury, respiratory failure and liver injury were 3.5 (1.6-7.4), 2.0 (0.5-8.7), and 2.3 (1.4-3.9) respectively. In addition, the subgroup analysis revealed that although PE elevated to > 3× upper normal limit (ULN) was significantly related to the mortality (OR= 4.4, 2.1-9.4), it seemed that mild elevation of PE to 1-3 ULN also had a considerable risk of mortality (OR= 2.3, 1.5-3.5).
Conclusions: PE elevation was a common phenomenon in patients with COVID-19, and was associated with poor clinical outcomes. However, due to the limited numbers of included studies, the result of our study still needed to be validated.