The value of serum ferritin and pre-albumin in distinguishing primary
mild COVID-19 patients and the patients with recovery positive virus
detection after discharge
Abstract
Objectives: To distinguish between primary mild COVID-19 patients and
the patients with recovery positive virus detection after discharge
(recovery positive patients), the clinical characteristics and
biochemical indicators were analyzed. Methods: By evaluation of
correlations between biochemical indicators and serum ferritin (FE)
through univariate and multivariate analyses, we evaluated the
differences of FE index and analyzed the effectiveness of the FE*
pre-albumin (PA) on discrimination between primary mild and recovery
positive COVID-19 patients. The area under curve (AUC) and a predictive
nomogram were further employed to evaluate the effectiveness of
discrimination. Results: In comparison with recovery positive patients,
liver damage-related indicators such as serum FE and PA were
significantly lower in primary COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms.
Area under the ROC curve values of FE, PA and FE*PA were 0.81, 0.78 and
0.83, respectively. In combination with multivariate analysis and
nomogram, FE and FE*PA can be considered as reasonable evaluation
systems for predicting primary mild and recovery positive patients.
Conclusions: FE*PA was an independent predictive biomarker for
distinguishing primary mild and recovery positive COVID-19 cases.