Can routine laboratory tests discriminate SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected pneumonia from other causes of community‐acquired pneumonia?

  1. Yunbao Pan
  2. Guangming Ye
  3. Xiantao Zeng
  4. Guohong Liu
  5. Xiaojiao Zeng
  6. Xianghu Jiang
  7. Jin Zhao
  8. Liangjun Chen
  9. Shuang Guo
  10. Qiaoling Deng
  11. Xiaoyue Hong
  12. Ying Yang
  13. Yirong Li
  14. Xinghuan Wang

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Abstract

Background

The clinical presentation of SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected pneumonia (COVID‐19) resembles that of other etiologies of community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP). We aimed to identify clinical laboratory features to distinguish COVID‐19 from CAP.

Methods

We compared the hematological and biochemical features of 84 patients with COVID‐19 at hospital admission and 221 patients with CAP. Parameters independently predictive of COVID‐19 were calculated by multivariate logistic regression. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was measured to evaluate the discriminative ability.

Results

Most hematological and biochemical indexes of patients with COVID‐19 were significantly different from patients with CAP. Nine laboratory parameters were identified to be predictive of a diagnosis of COVID‐19. The AUCs demonstrated good discriminatory ability for red cell distribution width (RDW) with an AUC of 0.87 and hemoglobin with an AUC of 0.81. Red blood cell, albumin, eosinophil, hematocrit, alkaline phosphatase, and mean platelet volume had fair discriminatory ability. Combinations of any two parameters performed better than did the RDW alone.

Conclusions

Routine laboratory examinations may be helpful for the diagnosis of COVID‐19. Application of laboratory tests may help to optimize the use of isolation rooms for patients when they present with unexplained febrile respiratory illnesses.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.25.20024711: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The clinical data collection from patients was approved by the Ethics Committee of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University.
    Consent: Written informed consent was waived by the Ethics Commission for emerging infectious diseases
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis: Statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS version 22.0 software.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1002/ctm2.23
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.02.25.20024711 on medRxiv