Modulating immunosuppression in liver transplant patients with COVID-19

We read with great interest the COVID-LT study by C Becchetti et al ,1 which included 57 liver transplant (LT) patients from 12 European institutions who were diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Simultaneously, the Spanish Society of Liver Transplantation (SETH) has conducted a nationwide prospective study including 22 transplant institutions and 111 LT patients with COVID-19.2 Since there were only nine overlapped cases, both cohorts add up to 159 LT patients and taken together their close analysis (table 1) may derive in practical conclusions. View this table: Table 1 Clinical characteristics and outcomes of LT patients included in the European COVID-LT cohort and in the nationwide study from the Spanish Society of Liver Transplantation (SETH) The crude incidence of COVID-19 was increased in the SETH study as compared with the COVID-LT study (0.84% vs 0.48%), even with a shorter recruitment period. This could be explained because the SETH study was performed during the outbreak period in Spain, one of the toughest in Europe.3 The SETH study allowed …