Lactate Dehydrogenase/Albumin To-Urea Ratio: A Novel Prognostic Maker for Fatal Clinical Complications in Patients with COVID-19 Infection

Hala Shokr*, Mandeep Kaur Marwah, Hisam Siddiqi, Farooq Wandroo, Lissette Sanchez-Aranguren, Shakil Ahmad, Keqing Wang, Sukhjinder Marwah*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Objective: To investigate lactate dehydrogenase/Albumin to-urea (LAU) ratio as a potential predictor for COVID-19-induced fatal clinical complications in hospitalized patients. Methods: This is a retrospective study involving blood analyses from 1139 hospitalised COVID-19 infection survivors and 349 deceased cases post-COVID-19 infection. Laboratory tests included complete blood picture, inflammatory markers, and routine organ function tests. Results: The non-survivor group showed lower haemoglobin (p < 0.001), platelet (p < 0.0001) and higher mean corpuscular volume, neutrophil count, neutrophil/lymphocytes ratio (NLR), and LAU (p < 0.001, p < 0.0013, p < 0.001, p < 0.0126) than the patients who survived the infection. The non-survivors also exhibited higher markers for infection-related clinical complications, such as international normalized ratio (INR), D-dimer, urea, total bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase (ALK), creatinine, c-reactive protein (CRP), and serum ferritin levels (all p < 0.05). In addition, LAU ratio was positively correlated with infection prognostic parameters including INR (r = 0.171), D-dimer (r = 0.176), serum urea (r = 0.424), total bilirubin (r = 0.107), ALK (r = 0.115), creatinine (r = 0.365), CRP (r = 0.268), ferritin (r = 0.385) and negatively correlated with serum albumin (r = −0.114) (p ≤ 0.05). LAU ratio had an area under receiver operating characteristic of 0.67 compared to 0.60 with NLR. Conclusion: Patients with a high LAU ratio are at increased risk of mortality due to COVID-19 infection. Therefore, early assessment of this parameter, intensive intervention and close monitoring could improve their prognosis.

Original languageEnglish
Article number19
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Clinical Medicine
Volume12
Issue number1
Early online date20 Dec 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

  • Article
  • COVID-19
  • SARS-CoV
  • prognosis
  • biomarkers
  • lactate dehydrogenase
  • albumin ratios

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