COVID-19 diagnosis and white blood cell count.

This article is about COVID-19 diagnosis and white blood cell count.

This article is for people who suspect they have COVID-19 infection, avoid self-isolation and close contact, and are still receiving the necessary treatment, and want to know how accurate are the laboratory tests for diagnosing COVID-19? This is for people who want to know how accurate the laboratory tests are for diagnosing COVID-19.It's not about how to increase your white blood cell count! Or how to increase your immune system? It is not a convenient thing that brings results like "how to increase white blood cell count!

Contents of the study

This is a review of 21 studies that looked at 67 different routine clinical tests for COVID-19.These studies looked at the accuracy of clinical tests in identifying COVID-19.Four studies included both children and adults, 16 studies included only adults, and one study included only children.Seventeen studies were conducted in China, and one study each in Iran, Italy, Taiwan, and the United States.All studies were conducted in hospitals, except for one that used samples from a database.In most studies, RT-PCR was used to confirm the diagnosis of COVID-19.The accuracy of a test is commonly reported using the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity.Sensitivity is the percentage of people with COVID-19 that are correctly detected by the test.Specificity is the percentage of people without COVID-19 that are correctly identified by the test.The closer the sensitivity and specificity are to 100%, the better the test will be said to be.

In order to practice the triage necessary to provide treatment, these tests must have a high sensitivity of 80% or higher.More than four studies evaluated specific tests, and their results were pooled and analyzed together.The current analysis showed that only three tests had both sensitivity and specificity greater than 50%.Two of these were what are commonly referred to as inflammatory markers.

Interleukin-6.

An increase in C-reactive protein.

The third was a decrease in the number of lymphocytes.

The third was a decrease in lymphocyte count. Lymphocytes can be a type of white blood cell, and a decrease in count can indicate an infection.

Reviewer's conclusion

Although these tests indicate the general health of the patients and some of the tests may be specific indicators of inflammatory processes, none of the tests studied can help to accurately rule out or exclude COVID-19. The study was conducted in a specific inpatient population, and future studies should consider non-hospital settings to assess how these tests perform in people with mild symptoms.

Stegeman I, Ochodo EA, Guleid F, Holtman GA., Yang B, Davenport C, Deeks JJ, Dinnes J, Dittrich S, Emperador D, Hooft L, Spijker R, Takwoingi Y, Van den Bruel  A, Wang J, Langendam M, Verbakel JY, Leeflang MMG. Routine laboratory testing to determine if a patient has COVID-19. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020, Issue 11. Art. No.: CD013787. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD013787.  

Conclusion 

This review was originally published on November 19, 2020, so the results may have changed now.I have introduced these conclusions because when I browse these studies, I try to browse meta-analyses that summarize the results of multiple studies, rather than using only one as a reference.The test results seem to indicate that there is no complete test that identifies COVID-19, as it contains items that are detected in common inflammatory conditions.If you are involved in health care, it is obvious to talk about the basics such as sensitivity and specificity, but for those who are not involved in these fields, the test = find disease, and a negative result is taken as okay and a positive result as infected.

I hope that this review will remind you of what the test means.