Since 2021, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has enrolled 90,000 people across more than 200 clinical sites as part of its RECOVER initiative to understand, identify, and treat post–COVID-19 condition, which is commonly called long COVID.
A cohort study was undertaken to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 infection led to persistent changes in the results of commonly ordered clinical laboratory tests. Because the symptoms of long COVID are so wide-ranging, the study also sought to determine whether patients with long COVID have persistent laboratory changes compared with those unlikely to have postacute sequelae.
The study included a total of 10,094 participants at 83 clinical sites. Of the total, 1,348 were uninfected, 8,746 had prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1,880 who currently had long COVID. At enrollment, the participants were tested for 25 commonly ordered laboratory tests. The tests included: complete blood count with differential, complete metabolic panel, international normalized ratio, D-dimer, lipid panel, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, thyroid-stimulating hormone, free thyroxine, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP), cystatin C, N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide, troponin, urinalysis, and urinary albumin–creatinine ratio (uACR). All of the participants were followed over a 2-year period.
Overall, the study found no evidence that any of the 25 routine clinical laboratory tests could be used as a reliable biomarker of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection or long COVID. Even those participants with highly symptomatic long COVID did not have significantly different laboratory test results.
Reference
Erlandson KM, Differentiation of Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Postacute Sequelae by Standard Clinical Laboratory Measurements in the RECOVER Cohort. Ann Intern Med, 2024;177: https://doi.org/10.7326/M24-0737
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