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Case Reports
. 2020 Jan-Dec:8:2324709620984603.
doi: 10.1177/2324709620984603.

Rhabdomyolysis in Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 Infection: Five Case Series

Shikha G Khosla  1   2 , Eric S Nylen  1   2 , Rahul Khosla  1   2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Rhabdomyolysis in Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 Infection: Five Case Series

Shikha G Khosla et al. J Investig Med High Impact Case Rep. 2020 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is now known to cause acute respiratory distress, cytokine storm, and coagulopathy. Multiple other manifestations have been published in recent literature. Rhabdomyolysis is a syndrome of muscle damage, with release of intracellular contents into circulation. It is characterized by marked elevations of creatinine kinase levels and myoglobinuria. In this article, we describe a series of 5 cases who were admitted with COVID-19 pneumonia and had severe muscle injury, as demonstrated by significant elevation (>5 times upper limit of normal) of creatinine kinase levels likely secondary to SARS-CoV-2 virus. The median age for these patients was 65 years, and most of them suffered from diabetes and hyperlipidemia. All patients were hypertensive males. Four out of 5 patients had preserved kidney function at baseline and were chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 2 or better. However, most of them suffered significant kidney injury and at the time of discharge one patient was CKD stage 2 or better, 2 were CKD stage 3 or worse, and 2 patients had renal failure and died due to complications of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; muscle injury; rhabdomyolysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Creatinine kinase (CK) trend in patients with rhabdomyolysis.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Creatinine trend in patients with rhabdomyolysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

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