Biomarkers in serum that correlate to disease severity and prognosis within COVID-19 patients - A retrospective analysis

The Covid-19 pandemic shocked the world to its core as it quickly swept the globe ravaging both healthcare systems and infected individuals alike. Our overwhelming lack of knowledge placed scientists and medical providers at an enormous disadvantage when faced with combating this newly discovered SARS-CoV virus. Nevertheless, as we progress further into the pandemic our knowledge and resources have been maximally directed towards uncovering how to stop SARS-CoV-2 or Covid-19. However, our focus on the creation of a vaccination for the novel Covid-19 virus has overcast the discovery of many biological markers which could directly help medical providers predict disease severity and patient outcome. Various studies around the world have communicated commonalities in concentration levels of ferritin, C-reactive proteins, hemoglobin, lymphocytes, red blood cell count and the cytokine interleukin-6 which all serve as biological markers in serum within afflicted Covid-19 patients. This study analyzes various lines of research which identified the presence of these biomarkers to then establish a connection between their concentrations and how they relate to each other and disease progression. By following the virus's intricate path of infection and breaking down the various mechanisms which are known to us, we were able to provide an exemplar list of biomarkers which could serve as a primitive system towards monitoring patients. The overall goal is to use the correlations between these biological markers and disease severity to help enable risk stratification, guide interventional studies to target patients at enhanced risk of developing severe cases and to optimize the allocation of limited human and technical resources during the ongoing pandemic