Abstract
Background: The situation of the corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19)
continues to evolve, our study explored the significance of serum levels
of Matrix Metalloproteinase 3 (MMP3) as a marker for patients with
COVID-19. Methods: Sixty-two COVID-19 patients in the First Hospital of
Hunan University of Chinese Medicine and Loudi Center for Diseases
Prevention and Control, from January to March 2020, were sampled as the
novel coronavirus pneumonia infected group. One hundred and thirty-one
cases from the First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine,
including 67 healthy individuals and 64 non- COVID-19 inpatients, served
as the non-infected group. Approximately every 5 d, sera from 20 cases
were collected and analyzed thrice, using an automatic biochemical
analyzer, to detect serum MMP3 concentrations. Following normality
tests, differences in serum MMP3 levels between the infected and
non-infected group were analyzed via SPSS (version 25.0) software, using
the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Results: The MMP3 concentration was
44.44(23.46~72.12)ng/ml in the infected group and
32.42 (28.16~41.21)ng/ml in the non-infected group. The
difference between the two groups was statistically significant
(Z=-2.799, P=0.005<0.05). Serum MMP3 concentration, measured
over three separate time points, were 55.98
(30.80~75.97) ng/ml, 34.84 (0.00~51.84)
ng/ml, and 5.71 (0.00~40.46) ng/ml, respectively.
Conclusion: Detection of serum MMP3 levels may play an important role in
the development of therapeutic approaches for COVID-19 and may indicate
the severity of disease.