Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: The coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak, reported in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, has a clinical picture with acute respiratory failure, currently affecting more than 100 countries. In our study, evaluation of hematological findings of children with COVID-19 positive mild-moderate clinic was performed and the diagnostic role of various hematological indices-leukocyte, neutrophil, monocyte, lymphocyte and platelet counts, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR)- was examined. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study included 15 children diagnosed with COVID-19 from nasopharyngeal swab samples by RT-PCR, and a control group of 21 healthy children of similar age and sex. The patients' age, gender, admission complaints, COVID-19 contact history, and first complete blood count parameters were recorded retrospectively from information of the patient files. RESULTS: The ages of the children diagnosed with COVID-19 (median±SD) were 8.7±5.7 years and the female/male ratio was 8/7, the healthy control group's age (median±SD) was 7.4±2.8 years, and the female/male ratio was 11/10. The most common complaints of patients with positive COVID-19 tests were fever and cough. A statistically significant difference was found between neutrophil, lymphocyte, and NLR between the COVID-19 positive children and the healthy control group (p=0.048, p=0.040, p=0.024, respectively). In the ROC analysis, when the predictive value for NLR is taken as 1.02, it predicts area under the curve (AUC) of 0.724, 95%CI (0.549-0.899), sensitivity 73%, specificity 62% for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in children. CONCLUSIONS: Abnormalities were detected in hematological parameters and indexes of children diagnosed with COVID-19 compared to healthy controls. The most prominent of these are lymphopenia and an increase in the NLR rate. We think that the evaluation of peripheral blood parameters can be considered as an important reference value in evaluating the prognosis of COVID-19.

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