Association Between Red Blood Cell Distribution Width and COVID-19 Severity in Delta Variant SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Jianguo Zhang; Jianhui Hu; Xing Huang; Shixiang Fu; Daoyin Ding; Zhimin Tao

doi:10.3389/fmed.2022.837411

Association Between Red Blood Cell Distribution Width and COVID-19 Severity in Delta Variant SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Feb 21:9:837411. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.837411. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Jianguo Zhang¹, Jianhui Hu², Xing Huang³, Shixiang Fu⁴, Daoyin Ding⁵, Zhimin Tao^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China.
² Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhenjiang Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Zhenjiang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Zhenjiang, China.
³ Center for Evidence-Based and Translational Medicine, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
⁴ Department of Hepatology, The Third People's Hospital of Yangzhou City, Yangzhou, China.
⁵ Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First People's Hospital of Jiangxia District, Wuhan, China.
⁶ Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory of Medical Science and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China.

Abstract

Studies have discovered that wild-type SARS-CoV-2 infections are commonly linked to abnormalities in the hematological profiles of COVID-19 patients, one such abnormality being characterized by elevations in red blood cell distribution width (RDW). Whether this linkage reoccurs in delta variant SARS-CoV-2 infection remains unexamined. Here we compared baseline blood parameters in COVID-19 patients infected by wild type and its delta variant, respectively. Our results here point to that although the delta variant has shown increased virulence, transmissibility, and vaccine escape, it has a minimally negative impact on RDW values that were previously found prognostic for COVID-19 severity.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; delta variant; red blood cell distribution width; vaccination.