Peripheral blood inflammatory markers in predicting prognosis in patients with COVID‐19. Some differences with influenza A

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the ability of peripheral blood inflammatory markers in predicating the typing of COVID‐19, prognosis, and some differences between COVID‐19 and influenza A patients. METHODS: Clinical data on 285 cases laboratory‐confirmed as SARS‐CoV‐2 infection were obtained from a Wuhan local hospital's electronic medical records according to previously designed standardized data collection forms. Additional 446 Influenza A outpatients’ hematologic data were enrolled for comparison. RESULTS: NLR, SII, RLR, PLR, HsCRP, and IL‐6 were significant higher and LMR was lower in severe COVID‐19 patients than in mild COVID‐19 patients (p < .001). PLR and LMR were lower in the individuals with influenza A than those with COVID‐19 (p < .01). COVID‐19 patients with higher levels of NLR, SII, RLR, PLR, HsCRP, and IL‐6 and lower LMR were significantly associated with the severe type. AUC of NLR (0.76) was larger while the specificity of IL‐6 (86%) and sensitivity of HsCRP (89%) were higher than other inflammatory markers in predicating the typing of COVID‐19. PT had obvious correlation with all the inflammatory markers except RPR. NLR showed positive correlations with AST, TP, BUN, CREA, PT, and D‐dimer. Patients with high IL‐6 levels have a relatively worse prognosis (HR = 2.30). CONCLUSION: Peripheral blood inflammatory markers reflected the intensity of inflammation and associated with severity of COVID‐19.NLR was more useful to predict severity as well as IL‐6 to predict prognosis of COVID‐19. PLR and LMR were initially found to be higher in SARS‐CoV‐2 virus‐infected group than in influenza A.