Lymphopenia as a predictor of severity in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection
Abstract
Lymphopenia has been documented as a marker of severity and complications in the COVID-19 patient. The objective was to determine lymphopenia as a severity parameter in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, by means of an observational, analytical, correlational case-control study, in which 140 medical records were reviewed. Sociodemographic, admission and hospitalization clinical variables, blood count values and serum biomarkers were recorded. Statistical associations were estimated using Chi2 and Student's t-tests, in addition to ANOVA, Pearson's R and receiver operating characteristic (COR) curves, considering significant values of p<0.05. The most frequent gender was male. The most affected age group was 61-75 years old. The most prominent clinical forms were moderate and severe. There were differences between comorbidities and days of hospitalization. When the correlation of the relative lymphocyte value was analyzed, no association strengths were found with the variables, only with the form of clinical presentation (r2: -.290) and the outcome of the disease, the lymphocyte value showed better performance for predicting the outcome of the disease. It is suggested to use the relative value of lymphocytes during the therapeutic management of patient COVID-19
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