A proteomic survival predictor for COVID-19 patients in intensive care

Author summary Healthcare systems around the world are struggling to accommodate high numbers of the most severely ill patients with COVID-19. Moreover, the pandemic creates a pressing need to accelerate clinical trials investigating potential new therapeutics. While various biomarkers can discriminate and predict the future course of disease for patients of different disease severity, prognosis remains difficult for patient groups with similar disease severity, e.g. patients requiring intensive care. Established risk assessments in intensive care medicine such as the SOFA or APACHE II show only limited reliability in predicting future disease outcomes for COVID-19. In this study we hypothesized that the plasma proteome, which reflects the complete set of proteins that are expressed by an organism and are present in the blood, and which is known to comprehensively capture the host response to COVID-19, can be leveraged to allow for prediction of survival in the most critically ill patients with COVID-19. Here, we found 14 proteins, which over time changed in opposite directions for patients who survive compared to patients who do not survive on intensive care. Using a machine learning model which combines the measurements of multiple proteins, we were able to accurately predict survival in critically ill patients with COVID-19 from single blood samples, weeks before the outcome, substantially outperforming established risk predictors.