Lymphopenia in severe acute respiratory syndrome: a summary on its frequency

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new human infectious disease caused by coronavirus. The first world outbreak occurs in 2002, starting from China and then thorough many countries. Abnormal hematological variables were common among patients with SARS. Concerning lymphocyte disorder, there were some previous studies reported the low lymphocyte in the patients with SARS. Here, the author performs a further analysis to document the frequency of the lymphopenia in SARS by the way of metanalysis study. Five available reports concerning the prevalence of lymphopenia in SARS among different populations were selected for further analysis in this study. Overall 637 SARS patients were retrospectively analyzed and 492 cases presented lymphopenia. According to this study, the overall prevalence rate of lymphopenia in SARS is 77.2 %. No significant correlation between the population ethnicity and the prevalence rate was detected in this study (P > 0.05). Here, the lymphopenia can be documented as an important characteristic of blood picture in the patients with SARS or it can indicate that "SARS is a viral-induced lymphopenia disease".