Diagnostic value of complete blood count in paraquat and organophosphorus poisoning patients

Complete blood count (CBC) is one of the most extensively used tests in clinical practice. In order to determine the diagnostic value of the CBC in paraquat (PQ) and organophosphorus (OPPs) poisoning, the CBC indices of PQ- and OPPs-poisoned patients were investigated in this study. A total of 96 PQ poisoning patients, 90 OPPs poisoning patients, and 188 healthy subjects were included in this study. The PQ- and OPPs-poisoned patients were divided into different groups according to their clinical symptoms. All CBC indices were analyzed by Fisher discriminant, partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), variance analysis, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The discriminant results showed that 87.7% of original grouped cases correctly classified between PQ-poisoned patients, OPPs-poisoned patients, and healthy subjects. The PLS-DA results showed that the important variable order was different in PQ- and OPPs-poisoned patients. Both white blood cell (WBC) and neutrophil (NE) counts were the most important indexes in PQ- and OPPs-poisoned patients. In OPPs poisoning patients, WBC and NE showed statistical differences between the severe poisoning group and the moderate poisoning group. Their areas under the ROC curve (AUC) were 0.673 (WBC) and 0.669 (NE), which were higher than cholinesterase (CHE; AUC 0.326). In conclusion, the CBC indices had a diagnostic value in PQ and OPPs poisoning; WBC and NE were the first responses and had clinical significance in PQ and OPPs poisoning; moreover, they are better than CHE in diagnosing OPPs poisoning.