The Severity of COVID-19 and its Correlation with Inflammation Biomarkers

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or COVID-19 has been spread quickly and caused 5 million deaths until February 2022. Severe symptoms of the infection may lead to death that prompts appropriate clinical diagnosis and adequate treatment going to be necessary. COVID-19 shows a severe inflammatory response which causes an imbalance in the immune response. Therefore, circulating biomarkers that can represent inflammation and immune status are potential predictors for the prognosis of COVID-19 patients. AIM: The purpose of this study was to discover the role of neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), neutrophil-monocyte ratio (NMR), and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) as inflammatory biomarkers for the severity of COVID-19. METHODOLOGY: This study is a single-center retrospective cohort study. The sample of this study was taken by consecutive sampling with complete clinical data from 1035 patients from Andalas University Teaching Hospital from April 2020 to September 2021. This study used SPSS Version 25.0 for data management and analysis. RESULTS: There was a relationship between the degree of COVID-19 infection and the NLR value (p = 0.001), as well as the LMR (p = 0.001), NMR (p = 0.001), and ANC (p = 0.001). There was no relationship between the degree of infection in the negative PCR patient group and the NLR value (p = 0.144), as well as the LMR (p = 0.700), NMR (p = 0.120), and ANC (p = 0.90). CONCLUSION: The severity of COVID-19 symptoms could be predicted through inflammatory biomarkers such as NLR, LMR, and NMR.