D-dimer is associated with severity of COVID-19
Citation: Lippi G, Favaloro E. D-dimer is associated with severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a pooled analysis. Thrombosis and Haemostasis 2020 [published online 3 April 2020]
What is this? Laboratory tests help when assessing disease severity, defining prognosis and guiding treatment. D-dimer values are commonly increased in patients with COVID-19 and may provide a better understanding of disease severity.
In this review and meta-analysis, the authors searched for studies which reported data on the difference in D-dimer values between COVID-19 patients with or without severe disease. They included studies published from 2019 to the date of the search and did not restrict their searches by language of publication. They did the search on 4 March 2020. They included 4 studies reporting median and IQR values of D-dimer and one study reporting the proportion of patients with D-dimer values above a locally defined diagnostic cut-off. They did a meta-analysis of the results of the 4 studies (533 participants).
What was found: D-dimer values were markedly higher in COVID-19 patients with severe disease than in those without severe disease.
What’s uncertain: The significant heterogeneity across the studies makes the current estimate of the relationship between D-dimer values in COVID-19 patients and their disease severity uncertain.