Role of Serum Lactate and CRP as Prognostic Markers in COVID-19

Abstract Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) started its spread all over the world from Wuhan, China in December 2019, spreading very rapidly in all parts of the world Early diagnosis of severe cases aid in taking the best treatment decisions and decrease mortality. Aim of Study: Assessment role of serum lactate and CRP in predicting the prognosis of hospitalized sever cases of COVID-19. Patients and Methods: In this retrospective study, we evaluated 42 sever COVID-19 patients in total. They were divided into two groups group1 (survived) (n=23) and group 2 (non-survived) (n=19). Evaluation of inflammatory param-eters total leukocyte count (TLC), absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), CRP and serum lactate were done. Results: The non-survived patients suffered from respira-tory acidosis. Serum lactate was significantly increased in group 2 than group 1 (p < 0.05). CRP were significantly highly increased in group 2 than group 1 (p < 0.001). Receiver oper-ating characteristics (ROC) curve was done to determine the diagnostic power of serum lactate and CRP in differentiating COVID-19. Serum lactate revealed an AUC of 0.73 with sensitivity 63.2% and specificity 82.6% at cut-off value 2.6. Regarding CRP revealed an AUC of 0.85 with sensitivity 94.7% and specificity 73.9% at cut-off value 77. Multi-ROC between serum lactate and CRP revealed an improvement in the discrimination power with sensitivity 84.2% and specificity 82.6%. Conclusion: Serum lactate and CRP are useful markers in predicting the prognosis of hospitalized sever cases of COVID-19. Dual assessment of serum lactate and CRP gave the best discrimination than the use of each of them alone.