Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 7, 2023; 29(1): 200-220
Published online Jan 7, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i1.200
Liver pathology in COVID-19 related death and leading role of autopsy in the pandemic
Martina Zanon, Margherita Neri, Stefano Pizzolitto, Davide Radaelli, Monica Concato, Michela Peruch, Stefano D'Errico
Martina Zanon, Davide Radaelli, Monica Concato, Michela Peruch, Stefano D'Errico, Department of Medical Surgical and Health Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste 34149, Italy
Margherita Neri, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Ferrara 44121, Italy
Stefano Pizzolitto, Department of Pathology, Santa Maria della Misericordia University Hospital, Udine 33100, Italy
Author contributions: Zanon M and D'Errico S contributed to the writing and conceptualization; Neri M and Pizzolitto S contributed to the formal analysis and investigation; Radaelli D and Concato M contributed to the data curation; Peruch M contributed to the supervision.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The review followed the PRISMA 2009 checklist statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Stefano D'Errico, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Surgical and Health Sciences, University of Trieste, Strada di Fiume, Trieste 34149, Italy. sderrico@units.it
Received: September 13, 2022
Peer-review started: September 13, 2022
First decision: October 30, 2022
Revised: November 14, 2022
Accepted: December 21, 2022
Article in press: December 21, 2022
Published online: January 7, 2023
Processing time: 112 Days and 18.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: A literature review, about liver pathology in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, demonstrates the presence of liver damage, which is represented mainly by congestion, steatosis, hepatic inflammation and necrosis, and portal inflammation. The problem to date is whether the damage is COVID-19 related (meaning from direct virus damage/inflammatory related/systemic pathology related) or drug induced. However, this demonstration involves the need to be careful during drug treatment in patients with altered liver enzyme values to prevent further clinical worsening.