By Steven Reinberg
Reporter from HealthDay
MONDAY, August 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) – A simple blood test can predict which COVID-19 patients are likely to shrink and die, a new study suggests.
“When we first started treating COVID-19 patients, we saw them getting better or worse, but we did not know why,” said researcher Dr. Juan Reyes. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, in Washington, DC
“Some initial studies came from China, which show that certain biomarkers were associated with poor outcomes. There was a desire to see if that was true for our patients here in the US,” Reyes said in a statement. school message.
For the study, Reyes and his colleagues evaluated approximately 300 patients with COVID-19 who were recognized at George Washington Hospital between March 12 and May 9, 2020.
Of these, 200 had studied all biomarkers, namely IL-6, D-dimer, CRP, LDH and ferritin. Higher levels of these markers were associated with inflammation and bleeding disorders, and an increased risk of increasing in the intensive care unit, need for ventilator support, and death, the researchers found.
Study author Dr. Shant Ayanian said, “We hope these biomarkers help physicians determine how aggressively they should treat patients, when a patient should be discharged, and how they monitor patients going home, among other clinical decisions.” Ayanian is an assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Currently, physicians base the risk of COVID-19 becoming less than fatal on age and underlying medical conditions. But this simple blood test can help make clinical decisions, the researchers said.
The report was recently published online in the journal Future Medicine.
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