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. 2023 Feb;46(1):93-99.
doi: 10.1016/j.bj.2022.08.005. Epub 2022 Aug 28.

Hypocalcemia: A key biomarker in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

María Jesús Ruiz-Álvarez  1 , Emanuela Stampone  2 , Yaiza Fernández Verduras  1 , Giovanni Gallo  2 , Marta Barrionuevo González  1 , Belén Beteré Cubillo  1 , Debora Bencivenga  2 , Fulvio Della Ragione  2 , Adriana Borriello  3
Affiliations

Hypocalcemia: A key biomarker in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

María Jesús Ruiz-Álvarez et al. Biomed J. 2023 Feb.

Abstract

Background: At the end of 2019 a new respiratory syndrome emerged in China named Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Considering the severity of the disease in adult subjects with one or more chronic pathologies, it was mandatory to find simple and effective biomarkers for negative prognosis of the disease easily available at the admission to the hospital.

Methods: To identify possible parameters showing association with the outcome in COVID-19 patients with pre-existing chronic diseases, blood biochemical profiles of 511 patients, enrolled from March to June 2020, were retrospectively evaluated. The pathological conditions taken into consideration were diabetes, arterial hypertension, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, obesity, and cancer. All the data were collected upon admission to the emergency room (ER) during the indicated period.

Results: We observed that serum and ionized calcium were prevalently altered in our cohort. We determined that hypocalcemia was a major parameter associated with mechanical ventilation and poor prognosis, correlating also with the presence of comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, and cancer. In addition, we found a positive correlation between hypocalcemia and clinical complications during hospitalizations.

Conclusions: Our results strengthen the relevance of serum calcium concentration as a useful prognostic biomarker in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Keywords: CKD; COVID-19; CVD; Calcium; Hypocalcemia; SARS-CoV-2.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Inflammatory parameters LDH (up) and rCP (bottom) in patients with (YES) or without (NO) hypocalcemia. Statistical significance p = 0.001 for LDH and p = 0.002 for rCP.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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