Anemia and iron metabolism in COVID-19 patients (search up to 3 August 2020)
Citation: Taneri P, Gomez-Ochoa S, Llanaj E, et al. Anemia and iron metabolism in COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Epidemiology 2020;35(8):763-73.
What is this? Iron metabolism and anemia may play an important role in the prognosis of COVID-19 patients.
In this rapid review, the authors searched for observational studies of biomarkers of anemia and iron metabolism in COVID-19 patients. They restricted their searches to articles published in English and did the search up to 3 August 2020. They included 189 studies (57,563 patients), from the Asia Pacific Region (134 studies), Europe (21), the Middle East (14) and the USA (20).
What was found: At the time of this review, the included studies suggested that hemoglobin and ferritin levels in COVID-19 patients vary according to the severity of COVID-19, age, gender and comorbidity.
At the time of this review, the included studies showed that patients with severe COVID-19 had lower red blood cell count and higher red blood cell distribution width than those with moderate COVID-19.
At the time of this review, the meta-analysis showed pathologically high levels of ferritin among COVID-19 patients with significant differences between moderate and severe cases, and between survivors and non-survivors.
At the time of this review, the prognostic capacity of hemoglobin and ferritin was uncertain.