Evaluation of Iron Deficiency in COVID-19 Pneumonia

Background: Inlate 2019, a new coronavirus disease was detected in Wuhan, China and called COVID-19. There are so many unknown factors about the virus. Iron metabolism is one of the topics have to be investigated for the development of therapeutic strategies for COVID-19. The aim of this study is to assess sequential changes in traditional biochemical iron status indicators during COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods: A case-control study. Case group was defined as pneumonia with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 and the control group consisted of patients with non-COVID-19 pneumonia. Biomarkers of anemia and iron metabolism, CRP, procalcitonin were analyzed. Demographic features, CT findings, SpO2, development of ARDS, ICU admission, duration of hospitalization, discharge status (event free survival or death) were evaluated. Results: 205 hospitalized patients with pneumonia were analyzed retrospectively. COVID-19 group was significantly younger than control group. 23 of 106 patients had critical COVID-19 infection. Comorbidity frequency and mortality rate of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were significantly higher. Hb, RET-He, iron, TSAT, CRP, PCT and SpO2 were significantly lower. Hb, RET-He, iron, TSAT levels significantly correlated to lung aeration loss, hospitalization day and inflamatory markers in COVID-19 pneumonia. Conclusion: The patients with COVID-19 pneumonia had iron deficiency anemia even they were young. Iron deficiency may effect the lung aeration loss related to paranchimal infiltrations of COVID-19 and mortality of the patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Our data indicates that iron deficiency is associated with longer hospital stays, lower oxygenation, higher CRP and procalsitonin.