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During the height of the pandemic, some hospitals were overwhelmed with patients seeking treatment for COVID-19. This situation could happen again during future outbreaks, especially with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern on the rise. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Analytical Chemistry have developed a blood test to predict which people infected with COVID-19 are most likely to experience serious symptoms, which could help health care workers prioritize patients for hospitalization and intensive care.
Although many people who contract COVID-19 have either no symptoms or mild ones, some require intensive care for pneumonia with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Risk factors for severe disease include older age, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, but these characteristics alone are not sufficient to predict which patients will become the sickest. Measuring levels of certain proteins or metabolites in the blood could help, but these tests are often slow, complicated or expensive. For more effective triage of COVID-19 patients at hospitals, Michelle Hill, Sanjeeva Srivastava and colleagues aimed to develop an easy-to-use method that could quickly and cost-effectively predict COVID-19 severity.
Although many people who contract COVID-19 have either no symptoms or mild ones, some require intensive care for pneumonia with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Risk factors for severe disease include older age, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, but these characteristics alone are not sufficient to predict which patients will become the sickest. Measuring levels of certain proteins or metabolites in the blood could help, but these tests are often slow, complicated or expensive. For more effective triage of COVID-19 patients at hospitals, Michelle Hill, Sanjeeva Srivastava and colleagues aimed to develop an easy-to-use method that could quickly and cost-effectively predict COVID-19 severity.
New method predicts COVID-19 severity, could help with hospital triage
Researchers have developed a blood test to predict which people infected with COVID-19 are most likely to experience serious symptoms, which could help health care workers prioritize patients for hospitalization and intensive care.
www.sciencedaily.com
