New research: Test predicts who is likely to be infected with severe Covid-19

To measure changes in blood biochemistry that occur with severe Covid-19, the researchers chose a technique called attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), which has been tested previously as a Covid-19 diagnostic tool.

Two regions of FTIR spectra from 128 patient plasma samples showed small but observable differences between those with severe and non-severe Covid-19.

Using these data together with clinical information about patients, the researchers developed a statistical model to predict Covid-19 severity. They found that the best predictor was whether the patient had diabetes, followed by the two regions in the FTIR spectra.

Adding the FTIR data to the model improved the sensitivity for detecting severe disease in a different set of 30 patients from 41.2% to 94.1%, it reduced the specificity from 84.6% to 69.2%, compared with the clinical factors alone.

This means that the new test was more likely to identify severe cases, but it also had a higher rate of false positives.

Source: American Chemical Society