Blood test predicting severity of COVID-19

[DrTuner]

 I think this one is a novel test, developed by a Finnish company. Just saw it in the news there and thought it might be of interest here as well:

https://nightingalehealth.com/news/nightingale-to-roll-out-novel-preventative-solution-for-covid-19

 

Quote

Nightingale Health today announced the launch of a preventative screening solution for COVID-19. The solution is based on Nightingale’s blood test that detects the likelihood of a healthy person developing a severe COVID-19 infection before contracting the virus.

 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.20143685v1

Edited July 9, 2020 by DrTuner

[Puccini]

As far as I can see from the prepublication of the study, this biomarker profiling is about severe pneumonia in general, without making a distinction between bacterial and viral pneumonia. Therefore, I fail to understand the claim that this test can predict the severity of an individual's Covid-19 risk.

[lkv]

9 minutes ago, Puccini said:

As far as I can see from the prepublication of the study, this biomarker profiling is about severe pneumonia in general, without making a distinction between bacterial and viral pneumonia. Therefore, I fail to understand the claim that this test can predict the severity of an individual's Covid-19 risk.

 

In the world’s largest metabolic profiling study to date, Nightingale analysed over 100,000 blood samples of healthy people from the UK Biobank. In 2020, some of these people developed severe COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation. The study analysed this data and found a specific molecular signature to be more common among those seemingly healthy people who ended up in the hospital due to severe COVID-19. In other words, those with this molecular signature are 5-10 times more likely to be hospitalised if they get a severe infectious disease, enabling targeted preventative actions before contracting the virus.  

[Patts]

 

17 minutes ago, Puccini said:

As far as I can see from the prepublication of the study, this biomarker profiling is about severe pneumonia in general, without making a distinction between bacterial and viral pneumonia. Therefore, I fail to understand the claim that this test can predict the severity of an individual's Covid-19 risk.

I thought it was quite obvious that the people who had the most severe reaction to the virus were those who developed Viral Pneumonia which resulted in longer stays in hospital, possible requirement for ventilation and long term complications, including far higher mortality rates.

 

So long as the biomarker identifies those at greater risk of suffering from viral pneumonia, it will be a handy tool at distinguishing those at greater risk of serious illness. 

Edited July 9, 2020 by Patts

[from the home of CC]

that is promising as a predictor of serious illness but in the US presently it can take weeks (in hard hit areas) to get just a covid test result so I doubt it would be of much use in countries with high covid incidence till the case rate falls to manageable levels...

[Puccini]

8 minutes ago, Patts said:

So long as the biomarker identifies those at greater risk of suffering from viral pneumonia...

But the biomarker does not make that identification, does it?

 

"...A multi-biomarker score was derived for prediction of severe pneumonia..."

 

The article tells me two things:

 

1. If I have this biomarker, I am at a greater risk of contracting pneumonia of any type than persons without this marker.

 

2. If I have this biomarker and if I contract SARS-CoV-2, I am at a greater risk of developing a viral pneumonia than persons without this biomarker who contract SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, yes, in this combination of circumstances, this biomarker test can help with deciding whether a person positive for SARS-CoV-2 should be advised to simply self-quarantine at home or be admitted to a hospital for observation and treatment.