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Certain Biomarkers May Indicate Greater Risk of COVID-19 Morbidity and Mortality
Increased levels of five biomarkers may indicate an increased risk of severe disease and death due to COVID-19, according to researchers at George Washington University. A study of nearly 300 subjects with COVID-19 found that those with high levels of biomarkers related to inflammation—IL-6, D-dimer, CRP, LDH, and ferritin—were more likely to be admitted to intensive care units and require respiratory assistance, as well as to die from the illness. Recently published in Future Medicine, the results suggest that this information derived from blood tests may help medical professionals more effectively treat those who present with COVID-19 infection. Read more here.
With all the headlines implicating race as a risk factor, it would have been appropriate to indicate if the population of patients included in this study and the analysis of the data could shed light on that. It’s quite all right if they didn’t look at that, or if they purposely did not look at that, but for all the talk about race as a risk factor, I have not seen it validated by science that looked into it. Just statistics.