COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 22 pp 22413—22424
Estimating the release of inflammatory factors and use of glucocorticoid therapy for COVID-19 patients with comorbidities
- 1 Cancer Center, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China
- 2 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China
- 3 Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Received: July 1, 2020 Accepted: September 21, 2020 Published: November 24, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202172How to Cite
Copyright: © 2020 Han et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
COVID-19 exhibits both variability and rapid progression, particularly in patients with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension or cancer. To determine how these underlying disorders exacerbate pneumonia in COVID-19, we evaluated 79 patients with severe COVID-19 and grouped them according to whether or not they had comorbidities. Clinical information, laboratory examinations, immunological function, and treatment outcomes were retrospectively analyzed. Our study revealed that severe COVID-19 patients with comorbidities had higher levels of inflammatory indices, including blood interferon-γ, interleukin (IL)-6 and c-reactive protein levels as well as the erythrocyte sedimentation rate. These were accompanied by lymphopenia, hypokalemia, hypoalbuminemia, a decrease in either CD4+ T cells or lymphocyte count, and coagulation disorders, which were closely related to poor prognosis. Patients with comorbidities also had longer disease remission times (27 ± 6.7 days) than those without comorbidities (20 ± 6.5 days). Cox multivariate analysis indicated that glucocorticoid therapy and IL-6 were independent prognostic factors. Our findings suggest that coexisting comorbidities aggravate COVID-19 through the excessive release of inflammatory factors and that glucocorticoid therapy may be beneficial.