Causes, clinical features and outcomes of drug-induced liver injury in hospitalized patients in a Chinese tertiary care hospital

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is an important liver disease in China, owing to the country’s huge population and the availability of a multitude of drugs. Consequently, DILI is becoming an increasingly serious health problem. However, there is not enough relevant epidemiological data, and the clinical features of these patients are not clear. We conducted this study to report the causes and clinical features of DILI in hospitalized patients, and identify the mortality and predictive factors. We retrospectively collected and analyzed the data of all hospitalized patients whose discharge diagnosis was DILI at the Second Xiangya Hospital between January 2011 and December 2014. The data analyses were performed using SAS version 9.2. Among the 469 patients who were diagnosed with DILI at discharge, 361 met the criteria for DILI on re-evaluation. The crude annual incidence rate of DILI was 92.95 cases per 100,000 patients. Chinese herbal medicine was identified as the primary cause of DILI in 36.01 % of the patients. The overall mortality was 8.59 %. Alcohol consumption, use of antituberculosis drugs, serum total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, total protein, albumin, thrombinogen time, international normalized ratio, and the model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score were significantly correlated with DILI-associated mortality. Among them, the MELD score and albumin were found to be independent predictors of outcome in patients with DILI. Chinese herbal medicine was the primary cause of DILI in the identified patients. The MELD score and albumin were independent predictors of outcome in patients with DILI.