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  • Extreme γ′ fibrinogen level...
    Hudkins, Matthew; Hamilton, Heather; Underwood, Samantha J.; Kazmierczak, Diana E.; Dewey, Elizabeth N.; Kazmierczak, Steven C.; Messer, William B.; Khan, Akram; Schreiber, Martin A.; Farrell, David H.

    Blood cells, molecules, & diseases, 07/2024, Volume: 107
    Journal Article

    COVID-19 disease progression can be accompanied by a “cytokine storm” that leads to secondary sequelae such as acute respiratory distress syndrome. Several inflammatory cytokines have been associated with COVID-19 disease progression, but have high daily intra-individual variability. In contrast, we have shown that the inflammatory biomarker γ' fibrinogen (GPF) has a 6-fold lower coefficient of variability compared to other inflammatory markers such as hs-CRP. The aims of the study were to measure GPF in serial blood samples from COVID-19 patients at a tertiary care medical center in order to investigate its association with clinical measures of disease progression. COVID-19 patients were retrospectively enrolled between 3/16/2020 and 8/1/2020. GPF was measured using a commercial ELISA. We found that COVID-19 patients can develop extraordinarily high levels of GPF. Our results showed that ten out of the eighteen patients with COVID-19 had the highest levels of GPF ever recorded. The previous highest GPF level of 80.3 mg/dL was found in a study of 10,601 participants in the ARIC study. GPF levels were significantly associated with the need for ECMO and mortality. These findings have potential implications regarding prophylactic anticoagulation of COVID-19 patients. •We found that COVID-19 patients can develop extraordinarily high levels of GPF.•We found the highest level of GPF ever measured, 260 mg/dL, in a COVID-19 patient.•These findings suggest that GPF could be used as an inflammatory biomarker.