Prognostic value of C-reactive protein in patients with COVID-19

Xiaomin Luo; Wei Zhou; Xiaojie Yan; Tangxi Guo; Benchao Wang; Hongxia Xia; Lu Ye; Jun Xiong; Zongping Jiang; Yu Liu; Bicheng Zhang; Weize Yang

SARS-CoV-2 epidemic has been preliminary controlled in Wuhan, China at current with the strengthened support from central and local governments. However, confirmed cases worldwide have exceeded 200,000 by 19 Mar 2020. Many other countries such as Italy, Iran, Spain, and United States of America, however, are showing an ongoing outbreak, 4 which will inevitably bring about shortage of medical resources. According to the report by Yang et al., the 28-day mortality was 61.5% for a group of critically ill COVID-19 patients. 5 Many patients with mild symptoms presented a sudden progressive to severe or critical illness. 6 Hence, to identify simple and efficient predictor is vital for us to provide strengthened attention and treatment to the targeted patients and thus to reduce the mortality of COVID-19. Similar to SARS, critical patients with COVID-19 presented higher plasma levels of cytokines, suggesting the involvement of inflammatory storm in the pathogenesis of disease progression. 7 C-reactive protein (CRP), a routinely measured inflammatory marker, was increased in most patients with COVID-19 and associated with disease severity. [7] [8] [9] In a Swedish multicenter study, CRP was . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.