Laboratory abnormalities in patients with COVID-2019 infection

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide a brief overview on the most frequent laboratory abnormalities encountered in patients with COVID-2019 infection An electronic search was performed in Medline (PubMed interface), Scopus and Web of Science, using the keywords 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019-nCoVor without date or language restrictions The title, abstract and full text (when available) of all articles identified according to these search criteria were scrutinized by the authors, and those describing significant laboratory abnormalities in patients with severe COVID-19 infection were finally selected The references of identified documents were also crosschecked for detecting additional studies A particular mention shall be made for procalcitonin and coagulation tests The former test does not appear substantially altered in patients with COVID-19 at admission, but the progressive increase of its value seemingly mirrors a worse prognosis This is not unexpected, whereby serum procalcitonin levels are typically normal in patients with viral infections (or viral sepsis), whilst its gradual increase probably mirrors bacterial superinfection, which may then contribute to drive the clinical course towards unfavorable progression The measurement of other innovative sepsis biomarkers, such as presepsin, for example, would probably help in increasing the accuracy in identification of severe COVID-19 cases, as well as for improving the current approach used for mortality risk prediction As concerns hemostasis tests, the evidence that laboratory criteria for diagnosing DIC are present in nearly three-fourths of patients who died underscores the critical role of these tests in this and other clinical settings, thus suggesting that their assessment shall be considered a routine part of COVID-19 patient monitoring