According to scientists, the combination of certain microRNAs and proteins indicates a lethal outcome of the disease.
Scientists from Hull York School of Medicine and the Department of Mathematics at York University have found unique markers in the blood of COVID-19 patients.
The study, which was published in the journal iScience, involved testing blood samples from over 160 patients admitted to hospitals during the first and second waves of the pandemic.
The researchers looked at cytokines and chemokines, which are blood proteins that drive the overwhelming immune response seen in Covid patients, as well as microRNAs, which reflect the state of diseased tissues and are already known to be good indicators of severity and stage in a variety of diseases.
They discovered a group of cytokines, chemokines, and microRNAs that were associated with Covid’s deadly consequences.
“Early in the pandemic, researchers observed high levels of inflammatory cytokines – molecules which adjust or alter the immune system response – in Covid patients with poor outcomes,” said the study authors.
“However, this so called ‘cytokine storm’ was also present in hospitalised patients with a milder version of the disease. We set out to fine tune our knowledge of which factors in the blood correlate with severe disease with more insight and accuracy.”
“Our findings provide a scientific foundation for the development of blood tests that could provide doctors with vital information on which treatments will be most effective for a patient.
“The fact that this analysis could be carried out as part of already established routine clinical blood testing could provide all hospitals with better tools for triaging patients and identifying early individuals who are more likely to suffer worse outcomes.”
“This collaborative work is very exciting,” said Dr. David Yates, Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Clinical Lead for Research at York and Scarborough Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, adding, “other national research projects our trust has been involved with in like the Recovery and REMAP-CAP trials, have already given us a handful of effective treatments for Covid-19. The trial goes one step further in identifying very specific features in used blood samples that would otherwise have just been thrown away. This means we might be able to target those novel treatments more effectively to those patients at the greatest risk.”
Source: Study
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