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Review
. 2023 Feb 11:16:539-562.
doi: 10.2147/JIR.S395331. eCollection 2023.

Clinical Significance and Diagnostic Utility of NLR, LMR, PLR and SII in the Course of COVID-19: A Literature Review

Jakub Wiktor Kosidło  1 , Blanka Wolszczak-Biedrzycka  2   3 , Joanna Matowicka-Karna  4 , Violetta Dymicka-Piekarska  4 , Justyna Dorf  4
Affiliations
Review

Clinical Significance and Diagnostic Utility of NLR, LMR, PLR and SII in the Course of COVID-19: A Literature Review

Jakub Wiktor Kosidło et al. J Inflamm Res. .

Abstract

Nowadays, society is increasingly struggling with infectious diseases that are characterized by severe course and even death. Recently, the whole world has faced the greatest epidemiological threat, which is COVID-19 caused by SARS CoV-2 virus. SARS CoV-2 infection is often accompanied by severe inflammation, which can lead to the development of different complications. Consequently, clinicians need easily interpreted and effective markers of inflammation that can predict the efficacy of the treatment and patient prognosis. Inflammation is associated with changes in many biochemical and hematological parameters, including leukocyte counts and their populations. In COVID-19, changes in leukocytes count populations such as neutrophils, lymphocytes or monocytes are observed. The numerous research confirm that indicators like neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), platelets-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and systemic inflammatory index (SII) may prove effective in assessment patient prognosis and choosing optimal therapy. Therefore, in this review, we would like to summarize the latest knowledge about the diagnostic utility of systemic inflammatory ratios - NLR, LMR, PLR and SII in patients with COVID-19. We focused on the papers evaluating the diagnostic utility of inflammatory ratios using ROC curve published in the recent 3 years. Identification of biomarkers associated with inflammation would help the selection of patients with severe course of COVID-19 and high risk of death.

Keywords: COVID-19; LMR; NLR; PLR; SII; inflammatory ratios.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Taxonomic classification of coronavirus.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Host cell infection and cytokine storm in COVID-19.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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