Background : COVID-19 virus has detrimentally impacted personal life styles. Social distance or quarantine was strongly recommended to prevent COVID-19 virus outbreak. Thus, physical activity was reduced and overeating was habituated. The excessive energy would affect prevalences of hyperlipidemia, metabolic syndrome, and fatty liver disease. Those have been known as risk factors for gallstone disease (GD). The purpose of this study is to investigate a change of the GD prevalence and risk factors for GD before and after the COVID-19 virus period (period I; 2018-19, period II; 2020-21).

Methods : A total of 6,066 subjects who visited a health medical check-up center in Jeju National University Hospital between 2018 and 2021 was screened based on medical records and included in this study. Uni-variate and multi-variate analyses were performed to investigate risk factors for GD.

Results : The prevalence of GD (5.2%) in the period II was significantly higher than that (3.7%) in the period I (P = 0005). The risk factors for GD were the period II (P = 0.004) , central obesity (P = 0.028), old age (P = 0.010) and impaired fasting blood glucose level (P = 0.034) on the multivariate analysis.

Conclusions : The GD prevalence was statistically higher in the COVID-19 virus period and the period could be a risk factor for GD.