Eleven Routine Clinical Features Predict COVID-19 Severity Uncovered by Machine Learning of Longitudinal Measurements (preprint)

Background: Severity prediction of COVID-19 remains one of the major clinical challenges for the ongoing pandemic. In this study, we aim to establish a model for COVID-19 severity prediction and depict dynamic changes of key clinical features over 7 weeks.Methods: In our retrospective study, a total of 841 patients have been screened with the SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test, of which 144 patients were virus RNA (COVID-19) positive, resulting in a data matrix containing of 3,065 readings for 124 types of measurements from 17 categories. We built a support vector machine model assisted with genetic algorithm for feature selection based on the longitudinal measurement. 25 patients as a test cohort were included from an independent hospital.Findings: A panel of 11 routine clinical factors constructed a classifier for COVID-19 severity prediction, achieving an accuracy of over 94%. Validation of the model in an independent cohort containing 25 patients achieved an accuracy of 80%. The overall sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV were 0.70, 0.99, 0.93 and 0.93, respectively. This study presents a practical model for timely severity prediction for COVID-19, which is freely available at a webserver https://guomics.shinyapps.io/covidAI/.Interpretation: The model provided a classifier composed of 11 routine clinical features which are widely available during COVID-19 management which could predict the severity and may guide the medical care of COVID-19 patients.Funding: This work is supported by grants from Tencent Foundation (2020), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81972492, 21904107, 81672086), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (LR19C050001), Hangzhou Agriculture and Society Advancement Program (20190101A04).Declaration of Interests: NAEthics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Taizhou Hospital, Shaoxing People’s Hospital and Westlake University, Zhejiang province of China, and informed consent was obtained from each enrolled subject.

Eleven Routine Clinical Features Predict COVID-19 Severity (preprint)

Severity prediction of COVID-19 remains one of the major clinical challenges for the ongoing pandemic. Here, we have recruited a 144 COVID-19 patient cohort consisting of training, validation, and internal test sets, longitudinally recorded 124 routine clinical and laboratory parameters, and built a machine learning model to predict the disease progression based on measurements from the first 12 days since the disease onset when no patient became severe. A panel of 11 routine clinical factors, including oxygenation index, basophil counts, aspartate aminotransferase, gender, magnesium, gamma glutamyl transpeptidase, platelet counts, activated partial thromboplastin time, oxygen saturation, body temperature and days after symptom onset, constructed a classifier for COVID-19 severity prediction, achieving accuracy of over 94%. Validation of the model in an independent cohort containing 25 patients achieved accuracy of 80%. The overall sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV were 0.70, 0.99, 0.93 and 0.93, respectively. Our model captured predictive dynamics of LDH and CK while their levels were in the normal range. This study presents a practical model for timely severity prediction and surveillance for COVID-19, which is freely available at webserver https://guomics.shinyapps.io/covidAI/.