The Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio Determines Clinical Efficacy of Corticosteroid Therapy in Patients with COVID-19.
Cell Metab
; 33(2): 258-269.e3, 2021 02 02.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1064967
ABSTRACT
Corticosteroid therapy is now recommended as a treatment in patients with severe COVID-19. But one key question is how to objectively identify severely ill patients who may benefit from such therapy. Here, we assigned 12,862 COVID-19 cases from 21 hospitals in Hubei Province equally to a training and a validation cohort. We found that a neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) > 6.11 at admission discriminated a higher risk for mortality. Importantly, however, corticosteroid treatment in such individuals was associated with a lower risk of 60-day all-cause mortality. Conversely, in individuals with an NLR ≤ 6.11 or with type 2 diabetes, corticosteroid treatment was not associated with reduced mortality, but rather increased risks of hyperglycemia and infections. These results show that in the studied cohort corticosteroid treatment is associated with beneficial outcomes in a subset of COVID-19 patients who are non-diabetic and with severe symptoms as defined by NLR.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Lymphocytes
/
Adrenal Cortex Hormones
/
COVID-19 Drug Treatment
/
Neutrophils
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Cell Metab
Journal subject:
Metabolism
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
J.cmet.2021.01.002
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