Drug-induced liver injury from antituberculous treatment: a retrospective study from a large TB centre in the UK

Background

We describe drug-induced liver injury (DILI) secondary to antituberculous treatment (ATT) in a large tuberculosis (TB) centre in London; we identify the proportion who had risk factors for DILI and the timing and outcome of DILI.

Methods

We identified consecutive patients who developed DILI whilst on treatment for active TB; patients with active TB without DILI were selected as controls. Comprehensive demographic and clinical data, management and outcome were recorded.

Results

There were 105 (6.9%) cases of ATT-associated DILI amongst 1529 patients diagnosed with active TB between April 2010 and May 2014. Risk factors for DILI were: low patient weight, HIV-1 co-infection, higher baseline ALP, and alcohol intake. Only 25.7% of patients had British or American Thoracic Society defined criteria for liver test (LT) monitoring. Half (53%) of the cases occurred within 2 weeks of starting ATT and 87.6% occurred within 8 weeks. Five (4.8%) of seven deaths were attributable to DILI.

Conclusions

Only a quarter of patients who developed DILI had British or American Thoracic Society defined criteria for pre-emptive LT monitoring, suggesting that all patients on ATT should be considered for universal liver monitoring particularly during the first 8 weeks of treatment.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-017-2330-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.