While the covid-19 pandemic is still raging across large parts of the world, doctors and researchers are working hard to find much-needed answers on how best to treat the insidious coronavirus disease.
From 1 to 31 March, British researchers examined 269 seriously ill patients with covid-19 detected at hospitals in the United Kingdom that are subject to University College London or Newcastle upon Tyne.
– This study supports that a proportion of seriously ill covid-19 patients have a hyperinflammatory syndrome (COV-HI), and that meeting the criteria for this syndrome is associated with a poor clinical outcome, write the researchers behind the recent study which is published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet.
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Increased mortality
Of the 269 patients, 90 patients met the criteria for the hyperinflammatory syndrome, which the researchers refer to as COV-HI, at admission.
It is clear from the results that a higher proportion of patients with this syndrome die than is the case among patients who do not meet the COV-HI criteria.
36 out of 90 patients with the hyperinflammatory syndrome, 40 percent, died during a follow-up period of up to 28 days.
Among the 179 patients who did not have this syndrome, 46 died, which is 26 percent.
“Meeting the COV-HI criteria was significantly associated with the risk of the next day’s escalation of respiratory support or death, after adjusting for age, gender and comorbidity,” the researchers write.
Furthermore, the researchers point out that their work builds on previous findings and provides new findings that may be important in terms of being able to predict risk in covid-19 patients.
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– An “overreaction”
Assistant Director of Health Espen Rostrup Nakstad points out that what the British researchers bring to the fore in this study is so new and important to document, and of such great interest in the clinical environments, that the Lancet has published it.
– This study substantiates that covid-19 can contribute to a strong inflammatory response, an “overreaction” in the body’s immune system, which is associated with increased morbidity and the need for intensive care, says Nakstad.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health’s man emphasizes that it is well known that covid-19 can cause such “hyperinflammation”, and it is not surprising that this is seen in the blood sample panel described.
– The study documents in a good way the connection between such parameters and the development of the disease, and it also documents the proportion of intensive care patients who have signs of such hyperinflammation in the sample of patients studied, says Nakstad.
