Correlation of inflammatory biomarkers with disease severity in hospitalised patients of COVID-19 at presentation

Abstract

Background: The course of COVID-19 ranges from asymptomatic infection to life threatening critical illness. Inflammatory biomarkers have vital role in predicting outcome, disease severity and disease prognosis in COVID-19 cases. This study aims to observe the correlation of these biomarkers with disease severity in COVID-19. Patients and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Chughtai Institute of Pathology from February 2021 to May 2021. Blood was collected from 1300 hospitalized adult PCR confirmed COVID-19 patients categorized in mild to critical disease classes. Asymptomatic cases, patients having coagulopathies and those who received plasma infusion were excluded from the study. Blood was analyzed for serum Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Ferritin, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin and D Dimers. Data was analyzed using SPSS 23.0. Results: From the study patients, 65.3% (n=849) were male and 34.7% (n=451) were female. Majority of the cases (43.5%, N=565) belonged to moderate group whereas only 0.6% (N=8) were in critical group. Study population had a mean age of 56 (+13.98) years. Serum IL-6 was taken as marker of disease severity, showed significant positive correlation with CRP (r =0.52), ferritin (r =0.33), D-dimers (r =0.32) but no correlation with procalcitonin (r =0.17) using spearmen correlation coefficient. All patients with critical disease had IL-6 levels above 1000pg/ml. Conclusion: The inclusion of inflammatory biomarkers in routine panel of COVID-19 patients can allow risk stratification of COVID-19 patients in different disease severity groups as cases with critical disease had higher levels.