The latest study published in the journal Critical Care Explorations revealed that the mortality rate for Covid-19 positive ICU patients was 40 per cent.

Protein biomarkers

The study noted that there are some important physiological protein biomarkers that can predict the likelihood of Covid-19 causing the death of an ICU patient.

The researchers mentioned that their data indicated the presence of a unique Covid-19 plasma proteome with six proteins predicting ICU mortality with 100 per cent accuracy.

They further indicated that despite the exploratory nature of our study, the data generated suggested that these six proteins could be considered for further investigation as potential disease severity and/or outcome biomarkers. They may be useful for patient stratification in clinical interventional trials.

The researchers stated in the study: “We performed targeted proteomics – the large-scale study of proteins – on critically ill Covid-19 to better understand their pathophysiologic mediators and to identify potential outcome markers.”

For the study, researchers collected blood samples from ICU patients in the London Health Sciences Centre, who were infected with the virus and compared them to those of uninfected individuals.

Covid-19 positive patients suffered bilateral pneumonia more frequently than Covid-19 negative patients, found the researchers.

“Sepsis – a medical emergency caused due to massive immune response to bacterial infection – was confirmed by infectious pathogen identification in only 20 per cent of Covid-19 positive ICU patients, whereas sepsis was suspected in the remaining 80 per cent,” added the authors.

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