Could ferritin level be an indicator of COVID-19 disease mortality?

ABSTRACT

While the number of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) cases is increasing day by day, there is limited information known about the hematological and laboratory findings of the disease. We aimed to investigate whether serum ferritin level predicts mortality is a marker for rapid progression for inpatients. Our study included 56 patients who were died due to COVID-19 as the study group, and 245 patients who were hospitalized and recovered as the control group. The laboratory data of the patients were evaluated from the first blood tests (pre) taken from the first moment of admission to the hospital and the blood tests taken from before the patient's discharge or exitus (post) were evaluated retrospectively. The mean age of the nonsurvivor group was 62.0 ± 15.7 and the mean age of the control group was 54.34 ± 13.03. Age and length of stay are significantly higher in the nonsurvivor group. When comparing the pre- and postvalues of ferritin, according to the two groups separately, there was no significant difference in the control group and a high level of significance was observed in the nonsurvivor group (p < .01). COVID-19 disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 causes high mortality with widespread inflammation and cytokine storm. Ferritin is a cheap and widespread available marker, ferritin, which can be used for its predictivity of the mortality and hope it would be a useful marker for clinicians for the management of the disease.