• Lei Liu, Yaqiong Zheng, Liping Cai, Wanlei Wu, Shi Tang, Yinjuan Ding, Wanbing Liu, Guomei Kou, Zhou Xiong, Shengdian Wang, and Shangen Zheng.
• Department of Transfusion Medicine, General Hospital of Central Theater Command of the PLA, Wuhan, China.
• Int J Lab Hematol. 2021 Apr 1; 43 (2): 329-335.

IntroductionMonitoring of laboratory indicators is important for predicting changes in disease severity and clinical outcomes. We aimed to identify the critical predictors that can effectively assess the disease conditions of patients with COVID-19 by analyzing the clinical characteristics and laboratory findings of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection.MethodsAll consecutive patients (n = 294) with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection admitted to the General Hospital of Central Theater Command of the PLA from February 6 to February 21, 2020, were enrolled. These patients were divided into the severe group and the nonsevere group according to disease severity during hospitalization.ResultsThe median neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) value of the severe patients was dramatically higher than that of the nonsevere patients (10.4 vs 2.6; P < .001). The NLR value equal to 5 was a boundary value worthy of reference, because more than 80% severe patients had an NLR value greater than 5 and over 80% nonsevere patients had an NLR value less than 5. The NLR value of these COVID-19 patients was positively and respectively correlated with the values of C-reactive protein (R = .5921, P < .001), lactate dehydrogenase (R = .4509, P < .001), procalcitonin (R = .5504, P < .001), fibrinogen (R = .4710, P < .001), and D-dimers (R = .4425, P < .001). However, the NLR value was merely and positively correlated with the interleukin-6 value (R = .3594, P < .05), but had no correlations with the values of interleukin-10, interleukin-4, interleukin-17, interferon-γ, and tumor necrosis factor-α (P > .05).DiscussionNeutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio is a critical predictor for assessment of disease severity in patients with COVID-19, and it has a close relation with the laboratory indicators related to disease conditions.© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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