Covid blood test could predict patient survival chances --new study

Covid blood test can predict patient survival chances Protein analysis provides digital picture of immune response and mortality risk, say scientists the Guardian

A blood test has been developed that can predict whether Covid patients will need intensive care – or are even likely to survive – shortly after they develop symptoms.

If validated in real-life hospital settings, the test could enable doctors to direct life-saving treatment to the most needy patients sooner, boosting their chances of survival. It could also bolster doctors’ confidence in the face of difficult decisions, such as whether to offer palliative care or an ICU bed when hospitals are close to capacity.

the idea is to provide doctors with a “digital picture” of how sick a patient is – something you cannot necessarily tell just by looking at them – which could help inform their treatment. For instance, in Covid-19, a phenomenon called happy hypoxia means a patient can feel relatively OK but then rapidly deteriorate.

“It turns out that such patients have an early inflammatory response to the infection, which we can measure in the blood and use to say, ‘OK, 40 days down the line, this is your likely outcome’,” said Ralser, a professor of biochemistry at the Francis Crick Institute in London and Charité University Medicine in Berlin.

“Every day counts with severe Covid, and those people who need intensive care need to get it as soon as possible because this greatly increases their chances of survival.”

Although it is unlikely that a blood test alone would ever be used to dictate which patients are allocated scant intensive care unit beds, it could provide additional data to help inform doctors making these hard decisions. ...