Hematological Parameters in COVID-19 Patients: Association with Severity of the Disease

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) produced severe acute respiratory coronavirus syndrome (SARS-CoV-2; formerly known as 2019-nCoV) and has mild to fatal symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the different blood markers in confirmed positive COVID-19 individuals and see how they associated with the severity of the condition. A cross-sectional study was conducted from September 2020 to March 2021 on seventy-six (20 female and 56 male) Iraqi patients unvaccinated against COVID-19. The mean age of the study subjects was (47.00±13.31; 43.86±14.27) for males and females, respectively. 68.42% of the cases with mild illness, 14.47% with moderate illness, and 17.10% were severely ill. The severity of COVID-19 was assessed by several hematological parameters, including white blood cell (WBC) count, derived indicators such as neutrophils to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and IL6, C-reactive protein (CRP), D-dimer, and S-ferritin. The results showed that lymphocyte count was lower in severely ill patients compared to patients with mild and moderate symptoms, with a significant difference between the three groups (2.274.83). Additionally, the NLR results showed a significant rise (11.56±1.23) in severe COVID-19. The results of the present study indicated that serum levels of IL6, CRP, and S-ferritin revealed significant differences (41.20±6.23 pg/ml), (50.66±12.55 mg/l), and (454.60±95.69 ng/ml) at (P≤0.05) in sever ill compared with mild and moderately ill patients respectively. The results indicated a highly significant positive correlation between IL6 and severity of COVID-19 infection at P<0.01. Furthermore, a positive connection is seen in Neutrophil, CRP, and NLR (0.229, 0.264, and 0.277) at (P≤0.05) respectively.