Prospective selected biomarkers in COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment

20, September 2021 |

Authors:

Abstract

COVID-19 outbreak has become a global public health issue and brought the world to a standstill [1]. Emerging from Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in December 2019, COVID-19 has affected more than 46 million people in 218 countries, and more than one and a half million people have died due to this disease till the date of this writing [2]. COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2, which is a positive, single-stranded, enveloped RNA virus from the family Coronaviridae [3]. With the help of spike protein (S-protein), SARS-CoV-2 invades the host cell by interacting with the ACE-2 receptor on the host cell membrane [4,5]. Due to its contagious characteristic, it is compulsory to ensure early stratification of SARS-CoV-2-infected patients [6]. The symptom of COVID-19 is heterogeneous, but the common symptoms include fever, dry cough and respiratory distress [7,8]. Many symptoms overlap with those of common flues, making it hard to understand the pathomechanism and diagnosis, as well as the treatment of this disease. Moreover, the lack of sustainable therapeutics is a treatment challenge for COVID-19. The identification of a perfect biomarker set for COVID-19 will enable clinical studies to determine whether a therapeutic has a clinically significant effect on its phenotype [9–12]. In addition to that, biomarkers can play a significant role in the early diagnosis of COVID-19, effectively differentiating it from other pulmonary infections. Pulmonary infections are infections that cause lung inflammation, thereby damaging their larger airways and smaller air sacs. Oftentimes, the overlapping symptoms of COVID-19 with other pulmonary infections such as pneumonia make it difficult to identify COVID-19 patients [13,14]. In this review, we will provide comprehensive insights into the role of different biomarkers for detecting COVID-19 as well as the factors differentiating it from other pulmonary infections.