Aging
Navigate
Submit an Article
COVID-19Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 15|pp 15670—15681

Elevated Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) level as an independent risk factor for the severity and mortality of COVID-19

Chang Li1, Jianfang Ye2,3, Qijian Chen4, Weihua Hu5, Lingling Wang2,3, Yameng Fan6, Zhanjin Lu2,3, Jie Chen7, Zaishu Chen8, Shiyan Chen2,3, Junlu Tong2,3, Wei Xiao1, Jin Mei9, Hongyun Lu10
  • 1Department of Cardiology, Hubei No.3 People’s Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan 430033, Hubei Province, China
  • 2Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519000, Guangdong Province, China
  • 3Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519000, Guangdong Province, China
  • 4Department of Emergency, The Fifth Hospital in Wuhan, Wuhan 430050, Hubei Province, China
  • 5Department of Respiratory, The First Hospital of Yangtze University, Jingzhou 434000, Hubei Province, China
  • 6School of Health Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei Province, China
  • 7Department of Gastroenterology, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519000, Guangdong Province, China
  • 8Department of Cardiology, Jiayu People’s Hospital, Jiayu 437200, Hubei Province, China
  • 9Central Laboratory, Ningbo First Hospital of Zhejiang University, Ningbo 315010, Zhejiang Province, China
  • 10Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Zhuhai Hospital Affiliated with Jinan University, Zhuhai People’s Hospital, Zhuhai 519000, Guangdong Province, China
* Equal contribution
Received: May 11, 2020Accepted: July 9, 2020Published: August 14, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103770

Copyright © 2020 Li et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Early identification of severe patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is very important for individual treatment. We included 203 patients with COVID-19 by propensity score matching in this retrospective, case-control study. The effects of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) at admission on patients with COVID-19 were evaluated. We found that serum LDH levels had a 58.7% sensitivity and 82.0% specificity, based on a best cut-off of 277.00 U/L, for predicting severe COVID-19. And a cut-off of 359.50 U/L of the serum LDH levels resulted in a 93.8% sensitivity, 88.2% specificity for predicting death of COVID-19. Additionally, logistic regression analysis and Cox proportional hazards model respectively indicated that elevated LDH level was an independent risk factor for the severity (HR: 2.73, 95% CI: 1.25-5.97; P=0.012) and mortality (HR: 40.50, 95% CI: 3.65-449.28; P=0.003) of COVID-19. Therefore, elevated LDH level at admission is an independent risk factor for the severity and mortality of COVID-19. LDH can assist in the early evaluating of COVID-19. Clinicians should pay attention to the serum LDH level at admission for patients with COVID-19.