Features of α-HBDH in COVID-19 patients with different ages,outcomes and clinical types: a cohort study

Background Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has spread all over the world and brought extremely huge losses. At present, there is no study to systematically analyse the features of hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (α-HBDH) in COVID-19 patients with different ages, clinical types and outcomes. Methods Electronic medical records including demographics, clinical manifestation, α-HBDH test results and outcomes of 131 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, with confirmed result of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral infection, were extracted and analyzed. Results The α-HBDH value in ≥61 years old group, severe group and critical group, death group all increased at first and then decreased, while no obvious changes were observed in other groups. And there were significant differences of the α-HBDH value among different age groups (P<0.001), clinical type groups (P<0.001) and outcome groups (P<0.001). The optimal scale regression model showed that α-HBDH value (P<0.001) and age (P<0.001) were related to clinical type. Conclusions α-HBDH value increases in some COVID-19 patients, obviously in ≥61 years old, death and critical group, indicating that patients in these three groups suffer from more serious tissues and organs damage, higher α -HBDH value and risk of death. The obvious difference between death and survival group in early stage may provide a approach to judge the prognosis. The accuracy of the model to distinguish severe/critical type and other types is 85.84%, suggesting that α-HBDH could judge the clinical type of COVID-19 patients accurately. In brief, α-HBDH is an important indicator to judge the severity and prognosis of COVID-19.