COVID-Associated Cast-Forming Cholangiopathy: A Commentary on Disease Mechanism, Treatment, and Prognosis

Abstract

The complete impact of COVID-19 infection continues to develop since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 cholangiopathy has been recently described in a subset of patients who recovered from severe COVID-19 infection. The most common phenotype of patients suffering from COVID-19 cholangiopathy had severe infection requiring a stay in the intensive care unit, mechanical ventilation and vasopressor medications. Patients with COVID-cholangiopathy present with severe and prolonged cholestatic liver injury. In cases where biliary cast formation is identified, we defined the entity as "COVID-19 cast-forming cholangiopathy". This subset of COVID-19 cholangiopathy is not well understood and there are no standardized diagnosis or management to this date. The reported clinical outcomes are variable, from resolution of symptoms and liver test abnormalities to liver transplant and death. In this commentary, we discuss the proposed pathophysiology, diagnosis, management, and prognosis of this disease.; Competing Interests: Yara Sarkis and Nasir Saleem are co-primary authors. Dr Mark Gromski is a consultant for Boston Scientific, received research support from Olympus and Cook Medical, outside the submitted work; None of the authors disclose a conflict of interest relative to this work. (© 2023 Sarkis et al.)