Combined lymphocyte/monocyte count, D-dimer and iron status predict COVID-19 course and outcome in a long-term care facility [post]

Flavia Biamonte, Cirino Botta, Maria Mazzitelli, Salvatore Rotundo, Enrico Maria Trecarichi, Daniela Foti, Carlo Torti, Giuseppe Viglietto, Daniele Torella, Francesco Costanzo
2020 unpublished
Background: The Sars-CoV-2 can cause severe pneumonia with multiorgan disease, which created an urgent need for the identification of clinical and laboratory predictors of the progression towards severe and fatal forms of this illness. In the present study, we retrospectively evaluated and integrated laboratory parameters/variables of 45 elderly subjects from a long-term care facility with Sars-CoV-2 outbreak and spread, to identify potential common patterns of systemic response able to better
more » ... tratify patients' clinical course and outcome.Methods: Baseline white blood cells, granulocytes', lymphocytes', and platelets' counts, hemoglobin, total iron, ferritin, D-dimer, and interleukin 6 (IL-6) concentration were used to generate a principal component analysis (PCA). Statistical analysis was performed by using R statistical package version 4.0.Results: Of the 45 patients, 19 were male and 26 were female, with a median age of 81 years. The overall mortality rate was 26.67%. By PCA and clustering approach we identified 3 laboratory patterns of response, renamed as low-risk, intermediate-risk, and high-risk, strongly associated with patients' survival (p<0.01). D-dimer, iron status, lymphocyte/monocyte count represented the main markers discriminating high- and low-risk groups. Furthermore, patients belonging to the high-risk group presented a significantly longer time to ferritin decrease (p:0.047). Iron-to-ferritin-ratio (IFR) significantly segregated recovered and dead patients in the intermediate-risk group (p:0.012).Conclusions: Our data generate the hypothesis that a combination of few laboratory parameters, and in particular iron status, D-dimer and lymphocyte/monocyte count at admission and during the hospital stay, can predict clinical progression in COVID-19.
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-72047/v1 fatcat:sozkqwi5bnhmpas4hdin6vcl6q