Association of inflammatory markers with the severity of COVID-19

Furong Zeng; Ying Guo; Mingzhu Yin; Xiang Chen; Guangtong Deng

The records from the initial search were scanned by two authors to exclude any duplicate and irrelevant studies. The following data were extracted: first authors, publication date, country of origin, grouping situation, cases, age, sex and levels of inflammatory markers in different groups. Stratified data or interquartile range (IQR) were converted to mean (±SD) using mathematical formulas for meta-analysis (Luo et al., 2018 , Wan et al., 2014 . Any discrepancies were resolved by discussion. Quality assessments of all potentially eligible studies were conducted using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). There are eight items in three aspects: selection, comparability and exposure. The full score was 10 stars. Four to six stars was regarded as a moderatequality study, and seven to nine stars as a high-quality study. Studies with NOS scores lower than 7 were recognized to be of inferior quality and therefore excluded.