Hematological and biochemical parameter changes among healthy individuals infected with COVID-19 according to sex and age: A hospital based study

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have linked COVID-19 to a range of human health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. Only a few research have focused on the specific effects of COVID-19 on healthy people. Consequently, this study was designed to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on hematological and biochemical markers among healthy people infected with COVID-19 patients according to sex, and age. Materials and methods: This study is a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted on 2,640 healthy people infected with COVID-19 in Jordan for the period from January 2021 to March 2022. Independent t-test and one-way ANOVA tests were used to compare the means of different groups. Results: In the present study, only 271 out of 2,640 COVID-19 cases met the criteria and were assessed according to sex and age. The average age of the study population was 57.90 years. The findings of this study revealed that statistically significant increases were noticed only in the levels of WBC, K, and ferritin of males compared with females. Similarly, statistically significant increases across various age groups were observed in WBC, MCV, MCH, PT, INR, and D-dimer levels. Moreover, statistically significant increases in FBS, creatinine, AST, CPK, CK-MB, ferritin, and LDH were seen when comparing the biochemical parameters across age groups. Conclusions: Patients infected with COVID-19 should be screened for all these studied hematological and biochemical parameters because the findings of the present study suggest that COVID-19 could lead to disturbances in, WBC, PT, APTT, d-dimer, INR, FBS, CR, urea, K, AST, ALT, ALP, LDH, CPK, CK-MB, and ferritin. We recommend clinical physicians to monitor patients’ conditions immediately by evaluating all of these parameters in order to prevent patients from deteriorating into life-threatening situations.