Global assessment of immune system associated with COVID-19 outcomes is in progress

Reassuring progress has been made in identifying specific biomarkers that are associated with shortest time to hospital visit with COVID-19 patients an indicator that will form part of the Diagnostic and Treatment Interventions Development (DTD) roadmap. This preprint has been published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

The acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS is mainly characterized by high physical and mental fatigue to an extent that it interferes with daily activities. It is associated with a poor understanding of the origin of onset of these symptoms and the progression of disease. In addition to reporting short-term mortality and disability DTD integrates data from the ME2 MELISA and EKG assays and suggests factors associated with reduced mortality including age sex and comorbidities severity of illness and severity of disease. To determine whether ARDS could be used to facilitate diagnostic and treatment decision-making for COVID-19 researchers studied the function of 195 biomarkers associated with endurance exercise. Affiliated by MedUni Vienna and the University Hospital of the DEUTS they analysed data from two clinical trials: one involving over 1600 COVID-19 patients and the other with over 1700 healthy controls. In terms of sensitivity and specificity the ARD test was significantly better than the healthy control when detecting the presence of COVID-19 within three days of hospital arrival and the shortness of stay says the studys lead author Alexander Korrens who heads the lab where the work was carried out. This means that the ARD test can be used to detect whether a person will develop symptomatic COVID-19 and therefore require a hospital visit and therefore make a good contribution to clinical decision-making for COVID-19 clinical management.