_Elias El Haddad
El Haddad is a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the College of Medicine.
_Charles Cairns
Cairns is the Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Dean and senior vice president of medical affairs at the College of Medicine.
Scientists have made substantial progress in predicting the path that COVID will take in patients, revealing that higher viral load and higher inflammatory pathways in the airway can predict the course and severity of COVID. The findings should help clinical teams identify which COVID patients need the swiftest and most aggressive care.
The findings were recently published in Cell Reports Medicine by researchers from Drexel’s College of Medicine as well as other academic and medical institutions nationwide.
“Thanks to the massive data analysis in this study, we now know factors at both the cellular and molecular level that are associated with severe COVID-19 disease and death.”
Researchers followed the participants — 540 adult COVID patients from 20 hospitals — for up to 28 days after they entered the hospital. They collected 14 unique lab tests using nasal swabs, blood, plasma and serum samples. Data revealed five categories of paths that COVID cases take, ranging from mild to severe cases that end in death.
“Thanks to the massive data analysis in this study, researchers now know factors at both the cellular and molecular level that are associated with severe COVID-19 disease and death,” says study co-author Charles Cairns, the Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Dean and senior vice president of medical affairs at the College of Medicine. “These factors that predict more severe disease appear in patients fairly quickly, within three days after admission to the hospital.”
The team looked at more than 15,000 blood and nasal samples for factors like possible indications of muscle damage, increases in white blood cells, changes in cells that line airways, and other factors that indicate increased inflammation and lower immunity, and less anti-viral response to fight the disease.
“We know COVID vaccines work, but they’re not the only factor at play in determining the path of disease,” says co-author Elias El Haddad, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the College of Medicine. “Different antibody response, among other factors, appears to play a noteworthy role.”