In a new study, researchers found a single blood sample from a critically ill COVID-19 patient can be analyzed by a machine learning model which uses blood plasma proteins to predict survival, weeks before the outcome.
Healthcare systems around the world are struggling to accommodate high numbers of severely ill COVID-19 patients who need special medical attention, especially if they are identified as being at high risk.
Clinically established risk assessments in intensive care medicine, such as the SOFA or APACHE II, show only limited reliability in predicting future disease outcomes for COVID-19.
In the study, researchers studied the levels of 321 proteins in blood samples taken at 349 timepoints from 50 critically ill COVID-19 patients.
A machine learning approach was used to find associations between the measured proteins and patient survival.
The team found 15 of the patients in the cohort died; the average time from admission to death was 28 days. For patients who survived, the median time of hospitalization was 63 days.
The researchers pinpointed 14 proteins that, over time, changed in opposite directions for patients who survive compared to patients who do not survive in intensive care.
The team then developed a machine learning model to predict survival based on a single time-point measurement of relevant proteins and tested the model on an independent validation cohort of 24 critically ill COVID-10 patients.
The model demonstrated high predictive power on this cohort, correctly predicting the outcome for 18 of 19 patients who survived and 5 out of 5 patients who died
The researchers conclude that blood protein tests, if validated in larger cohorts, may be useful in both identifying patients with the highest mortality risk, as well as for testing whether a given treatment changes the projected trajectory of an individual patient.
If you care about Covid, please read studies that new chewing gum could reduce COVID-19 transmission, and are some foods super bitter to you? You may have lower COVID-19 risk.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about what’s your treatment options for COVID-19 approved by FDA, and results showing that COVID-19 vaccines need to be shored up with a plant-based diet.
The study is published in PLOS Digital Health. One author of the study is Demichev V.
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