A Retrospective Study of Inflammatory Biomarkers in COVID-19 Patients

ABSTRACT

Objective: Covid-19 has impacted the health of the people and 20% of the patients were critical and hospitalized with the need for ventilation and intensive care unit (ICU) support. This study aimed to study the association of inflammatory biomarkers with severity of COVID-19 infection. Material & Method: For this study, 545 Covid-19 infected patients admitted in New Civil hospital, Bharuch were selected. The infection related to Covid-19 was confirmed using the Real-Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test. Pearson correlation was used to assess the correlation between inflammatory markers and laboratory indicators. A p-value of <0.05 was used as a cut-off value for significance. Results: The inflammatory markers and WBC count was significantly elevated in the critical COVID-19 patients. Moreover, patients with lower absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) were significantly associated with severe to critical COVID-19 infection compared to the mild to moderate form that showed higher lymphocyte count (P<0.0001). Moreover, patients with evidence of acute cardiac injury showed a significantly lower ALC (1.08±0.628× 103 cells/μL) compared to (1.38±0.72× 103 cells/μL) (P<0.0001). Conclusion: From the study, it can be concluded that there is a significant association between different inflammatory markers, clinical as well as the laboratory profile of the Covid-19 patients affecting the recovery.