Liver disease is one of the leading public health problems faced by healthcare practitioners regularly. As such, there has been a search for an inexpensive, readily available, non-invasive marker to aid in monitoring and prognosticating hepatic disorders. Recently, red blood cell distribution width (RDW) has been found to be associated with various inflammatory conditions with implications for its use as a potential marker for assessing disease progression and prognosis in multiple conditions. Multiple factors effect red blood cell production whereby a dysfunction in any process can lead to anisocytosis. Furthermore, a chronic inflammatory state leads to increased oxidative stress and produces inflammatory cytokines causing dysregulation and increased intracellular uptake and use of both iron and vitamin B12, which leads to a reduction in erythropoiesis causing an increase in RDW. This literature review reviews in-depth pathophysiology that may lead to an increase in RDW and its potential correlation with chronic liver diseases, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, hepatitis E, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. In our review, we examine the use of RDW as a prognostic and predictive marker for hepatic injury and chronic liver disease.

The earliest evidence from China suggested that COVID-19 patients are even more vulnerable to succumbing from complications in the presence of a multimorbid status, including metabolic syndrome. Due to ongoing metabolic abnormalities, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) appears to be a potential risk factor for contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection and developing related complications. This is because of the interplay of chronically active inflammatory pathways in NAFLD- and COVID-19-associated acute cytokine storm. The risk of severe disease could also be attributed to compromised liver function as a result of NAFLD. We systematically reviewed current literature to ascertain the relationship between NAFLD and severe COVID-19, independent of obesity, which is considered the major factor risk factor for both NAFLD and COVID-19. We found that NAFLD is a predictor of severe COVID-19, even after adjusting for the presence of obesity (OR 2.358; 95% CI: 1.902–2.923, p < 0.001).

Introduction: We aimed to assess the impact of socio-economic determinants of health (SEDH) on survival disparities within and between the ethnic groups of young-onset (<50 years age) colorectal adenocarcinoma patients. Patients and Methods: Surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) registry was used to identify colorectal adenocarcinoma patients aged between 25–49 years from 2012 and 2016. Survival analysis was performed using the Kaplan–Meir method. Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine the hazard effect of SEDH. American community survey (ACS) data 2012–2016 were used to analyze the impact of high school education, immigration status, poverty, household income, employment, marital status, and insurance type. Results: A total of 17,145 young-onset colorectal adenocarcinoma patients were studied. Hispanic (H) = 2874, Non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaskan Native (NHAIAN) = 164, Non-Hispanic Asian Pacific Islander (NHAPI) = 1676, Non-Hispanic black (NHB) = 2305, Non-Hispanic white (NHW) = 10,126. Overall cancer-specific survival was, at 5 years, 69 m. NHB (65.58 m) and NHAIAN (65.67 m) experienced worse survival compared with NHW (70.11 m), NHAPI (68.7), and H (68.31). High school education conferred improved cancer-specific survival significantly with NHAPI, NHB, and NHW but not with H and NHAIAN. Poverty lowered and high school education improved cancer-specific survival (CSS) in NHB, NHW, and NHAPI. Unemployment was associated with lowered CSS in H and NAPI. Lower income below the median negatively impacted survival among H, NHAPI NHB, and NHW. Recent immigration within the last 12 months lowered CSS survival in NHW. Commercial health insurance compared with government insurance conferred improved CSS in all groups. Conclusions: Survival disparities were found among all races with young-onset colorectal adenocarcinoma. The pattern of SEDH influencing survival was unique to each race. Overall higher income levels, high school education, private insurance, and marital status appeared to be independent factors conferring favorable survival found on multivariate analysis.

Aim: Gastrointestinal malignant melanoma is a rare mucosal melanoma (MM). Other MM include the respiratory and the genitourinary tract. All mucosal melanomas have a poor prognosis when compared to cutaneous melanomas. Ano-rectal melanomas are by far the most common and most studied gastrointestinal MM. Large-scale clinical data is lacking due to the rarity of the disease. We aim to analyze epidemiology and survival of the Gastrointestinal (G.I.) MM over 45 years using a national database.Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database was queried to identify patients with biopsy-proven G.I. Melanomas. We selected tumor site, intervention, and survival information for oncology codes as per the international classification of diseases. Survival analysis was performed using the SPSS v 27 ® IBM software.Results: Of the 1105 biopsy-proven confirmed cases of primary G.I. melanoma's, 191 (17.3%) received chemotherapy (C.T.), 202 (18.3%) received radiotherapy (R.T.), 63 (5.7%) received both C.T and R.T., while 684 (61.9%) of the population received surgery alone or combined with C.T. and/or R.T. Statistically significant improvement in survival was noted in all treatment strategies that utilized surgery and also when site-specific MM cohorts underwent a surgical approach with or without C.T and/or R.T.Conclusion: This is the most extensive study reporting epidemiological and survival data of treatment strategy outcomes of primary G.I. mucosal melanoma elucidating best overall survival with a management strategy involving surgical intervention.