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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences 2021; 13(03): 136-141
DOI: 10.4103/ijmbs.ijmbs_43_21
Original Article

Can the immature granulocyte count have a role in the diagnosis of coronavirus 2019 disease?

Fatih Selvi
Department of Emergency Medicine, Health Science University Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Antalya, Turkey
,
Cihan Bedel
Department of Emergency Medicine, Health Science University Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Antalya, Turkey
,
Mustafa Korkut
Department of Emergency Medicine, Health Science University Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Antalya, Turkey
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Background: The pathophysiology of COVID-19 disease is not clearly understood; inflammation has been shown to play a major role. The immature granulocytes count (IGC) can be an indicator of inflammation. To the best of our knowledge, there is no data on the usability of IGC for the diagnosis of COVID-19. Objectives: We aim to investigate the usability of the inflammatory marker IGC in the diagnosis of COVID-19. Patients and Methods: COVID-19 patients admitted to a tertiary university hospital were included in this study, and hemogram parameters, white blood cells, hemoglobin, neutrophils, lymphocytes, and IGC were investigated. According to the real-time reverse transcriptional polymerase chain reaction, patients were categorized into two groups as COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative. Results: The mean value of IGC was 0.02 (0.02) for the COVID-19-positive group and 0.11 (0.04) for the COVID-19-negative group. Patients with COVID-19 positive were found to have an IGC value that is significantly lower than the other group (P < 0.001). For IGC, it was calculated at a cut-off value of 0.03 (area under the curve: 0.718; sensitivity: 66.7%; specificity: 72.3%; P < 0.001). Conclusions: The results of our study have shown that on-admission IGC level is a novel, cost-effective, and readily available biomarker with a promising predictive marker for COVID-19 patients.

Key-words:

COVID-19 - diagnosis - emergency service - immature granulocytes - inflammation

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.




Publication History

Received: 23 June 2021

Accepted: 12 August 2021

Article published online:
14 July 2022

© 2021. The Libyan Authority of Scientific Research and Technologyand the Libyan Biotechnology Research Center. All rights reserved. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License,permitting copying and reproductionso long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, oradapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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