Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Yannis Lombardi and Pascal Seris authors contributed equally to this work as co-second authors. Correspondence and offprint requests to: Maxime Touzot; E-mail: maxime. For commercial re-use, please contact journals. Information regarding coronavirus disease COVID in haemodialysis HD patients is limited and early studies suggest a poor outcome. We conducted a prospective, observational and multicentric study.
Blood tests were performed before diagnosis and at Days 7 and 14 after diagnosis. Severe forms of COVID were defined as requiring oxygen therapy, admission in an intensive care unit or death.
Cox regression models were used to compute adjusted hazard ratios aHRs. KaplanβMeier curves and log-rank tests were used for survival analysis. At Day 7 post-diagnosis, neutrophil counts, neutrophil:lymphocyte N:L ratio, C-reactive protein, ferritin, fibrinogen and lactate dehydrogenase levels were significantly higher in severe COVID patients. An elevated N:L ratio at Day 7 was highly associated with the severe forms.
Assessing the N:L ratio could inform clinicians for early treatment decisions. Similar to Italy and Spain, France was severely impacted, with the highest infection rates in the northeastern region, Paris and its suburbs. Co-morbidities such as age, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and chronic kidney disease CKD are risk factors for developing severe forms of COVID that are associated with the worst outcomes and high in-hospital death rates [ 1β3 ]. Haemodialysis HD patients have a compromised immune system and present many co-morbidities linked to severe forms of COVID [ 4 , 5 ].
Travelling from home to dialysis facilities three or more times a week and being surrounded by other patients in a healthcare setting increases their risk for COVID infection and transmission. Prompt identification of SARS-CoV-2 infection and isolation are essential to reducing disease spread and controlling the pandemic, especially in this particularly vulnerable population. To date, available information regarding the epidemiology, outcome and therapeutic strategy for COVID infection in HD patients remains limited [ 6β8 ].
