Role of Ursodeoxycholic Acid in Treating and Preventing Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury. A Systematic Review
Role of Ursodeoxycholic Acid in Treating and Preventing Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury. A Systematic Review
Blog Article
Introduction: Treatment here is generally not available for drug-induced liver injury (DILI) patients except in some specific circumstances.The management of DILI is based on the withdrawal of the responsible drug and monitoring the patients and only a few patients need to be referred to a transplant center.Some studies on the role of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) in DILI have been published.
The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review of the role of UDCA in the treatment and prevention of DILI.Methods: A search was undertaken in PubMed, with the key words ursodeoxycholic acid, drug-induced liver injury and hepatotoxicity following the PRISMA guidelines.Results: A total of 33 publications were identified: 25 case reports and 8 case series.
In 18 of the 25 cases reports (22 patients), authors reported improvement of liver injury associated with UDCA therapy whereas 7 case reports did not show clinical or biochemical improvement after UDCA treatment.There were 4 studies evaluating the role of UDCA in the treatment of DILI, three prospective (one being a clinical trial) and one retrospective studies.Three studies observed liver profile improvements associated with UDCA.
In addition, four studies evaluated UDCA in the prevention of DILI: one pilot study, two randomized clinical trials (RCT) and one retrospective study.Three of these caruso rhodiola studies observed a lower percentage of patients with an increase in transaminases in the groups that used UDCA for DILI prevention.Conclusion: According to available data UDCA seems to have some benefits in the treatment and prevention of DILI.
However, the design of the published studies does not allow a firm conclusion to be drawn on the efficacy of UDCA in DILI.A well designed RCT to evaluate the role of UDCA in DILI is needed.