Abstract: Objective To study the clinical characteristics of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in children. Methods Data were taken retrospectively from the 62 children with DILI in Henan Children's Hospital, and different variables including age distribution, clinical symptoms, types of drugs causing liver injury, therapeutic drugs, clinical outcome, liver function indexes and the Roussel uclaf causality assessment method (RUCAM) were defined and analyzed. Results Hepatocellular DILI was the most common type based on the R ratio, accounting for 87.1% (54/62). The most affected children were in the 1-3-year-old (33.9%, 21/62) and 3-6 year-old group(41.9%, 26/62). The most prevalent clinical symptom of DILI was loss of appetite (59.7%, 37/62). The drugs causing DILI in children mainly included antibacterial drugs, antipyretic analgesics and Traditional Chinese medicine. There were significant differences in serum ALT, AST and ALP levels among the three types of DILI patients (F=21.357, 12.574, 6.200, all P<0.05) . Outcomes for patients with DILI were excellent after treatment, and the recovery rate was 93.5% (58/62). 51.6% (32/62) of the children with liver injury were “highly likely” to be related to drug causality. RUCAM scale scores of the hepatocellular, cholestatic and mixed types were 5.8±1.9, 6.1±1.7 and 5.2±1.5, respectively. No significant difference among the three groups was found(F=0.240, P=0.787).Conclusion Hepatocellular injury is the main type in children with DILI. Clinical monitoring hepatotoxicity of antibiotics, antipyretic analgesics and Traditional Chinese medicine should be strengthened to reduce the adverse drug reactions to children.

Key words: Liver injury in children, Drug-induced liver injury, Liver injury and drug causality, Retrospective analysis