Acute kidney injury is associated with severe and fatal outcomes in patients with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic impacting 213 countries and territories with more than 17,918,582 cases worldwide. Kidney dysfunction has been reported to occur in severe and death cases. This meta-analysis was done to summarize available studies on the association between acute kidney injury and severity of COVID-19 infection. Online databases including Web of Science, PubMed/Medline, Cochrane Library, Scopus and Google Scholar were searched to detect relevant articles up to 1 July 2020, using relevant keywords. To pool data, a random- or fixed-effects model was used based on the heterogeneity between studies. In total, 50 studies with 8,180 COVID-19 confirmed cases (severe cases=1,823 and death cases=775), were included in this meta-analysis. Higher serum levels of creatinine (weighted mean difference (WMD) for disease severity=5.47 mol/L, 95% CI=2.89 to 8.05, P<0.001 and WMD for mortality=18.32 mol/L, 95% CI=12.88 to 23.75, P<0.001), blood urea nitrogen (BUN) (WMD for disease severity=1.10 mmol/L, 95% CI=0.67 to 1.54, P<0.001 and WMD for mortality=3.56 mmol/L, 95% CI=2.65 to 4.48, P<0.001) and lower levels of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) (WMD for disease severity=-15.34 mL/min/1.73 m2, 95% CI=-18.46 to -12.22, P<0.001 and WMD for mortality=-22.74 mL/min/1.73 m2, 95% CI=-27.18 to -18.31, P<0.001) were associated with a significant increase in the severity and mortality of COVID-19 infection. Acute kidney injury, as assessed by kidney biomarkers (serum creatinine, BUN and eGFR), was associated with severe outcome and death from COVID-19 infection.