A novel haemocytometric COVID-19 prognostic score developed and validated in an observational multicentre European hospital-based study
- Sysmex Europe GMBH, Germany
- Amphia Hospital, Netherlands
- Elisabeth-Tweesteden Hospital, Netherlands
- Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII Bergamo, Italy
- Erasmus MC, University Medical Center, Netherlands
- Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
- Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Netherlands
- Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital, Netherlands
- Catharina Hospital, Netherlands
- University Hospital Antwerp, Belgium
- University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Netherlands
- Zuyderland Medical Center, Netherlands
- Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands
Abstract
COVID-19 induces haemocytometric changes. Complete blood count changes, including new cell activation parameters, from 982 confirmed COVID-19 adult patients from 11 European hospitals were retrospectively analysed for distinctive patterns based on age, gender, clinical severity, symptom duration and hospital days. The observed haemocytometric patterns formed the basis to develop a multi-haemocytometric-parameter prognostic score to predict, during the first three days after presentation, which patients will recover without ventilation or deteriorate within a two-week timeframe, needing intensive care or with fatal outcome. The prognostic score, with ROC curve AUC at baseline of 0.753 (95% CI 0.723-0.781) increasing to 0.875 (95% CI 0.806-0.926) on day 3, was superior to any individual parameter at distinguishing between clinical severity. Findings were confirmed in a validation cohort. Aim is that the score and haemocytometry results are simultaneously provided by analyser software, enabling wide applicability of the score as haemocytometry is commonly requested in COVID-19 patients.
Data availability
All data analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supportinng files . Source data files have been provided for figures 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12, and tables 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7.
Article and author information
Author details
Simone van der Sar-van der Brugge
Lucas Joost Van Pelt
Andre J van der Ven
Funding
Sysmex Europe GMBH provided free of charge reagents for the study. No monetary payments were made to any of the investigators. Joachim Linssen, Jarob Saker and Marion Münster are full-time employees of Sysmex Europe GMBH and Andre van der Ven has an ad hoc consultancy agreement with Sysmex Europe GMBH.
Ethics
Human subjects: The study was reviewed by all participating centre ethics committees with approval granted in Italy (Registration Number 54/20) and Belgium (Registration Number 3002020000105) and exemption in the Netherlands, with need for informed consent waived by all.
Copyright
© 2020, Linssen et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A novel haemocytometric COVID-19 prognostic score developed and validated in an observational multicentre European hospital-based study
eLife 9:e63195.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63195
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