Diagnosis and prognosis of COVID-19 employing analysis of patients' plasma and serum via LC-MS and machine learning

• Autor(a) principal: Cobre, Alexandre de Fátima
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Surek, Monica, Stremel, Dile Pontarolo, Fachi, Mariana Millan, Borba, Helena Hiemisch, Tonin, Fernanda, Pontarolo, Roberto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/14694
• topic: COVID-19; Fatality; Severity; Diagnosis; Biomarker; Machine learning

Objective: To implement and evaluate machine learning (ML) algorithms for the prediction of COVID-19 diagnosis, severity, and fatality and to assess biomarkers potentially associated with these outcomes. Material and methods: Serum (n = 96) and plasma (n = 96) samples from patients with COVID-19 (acute, severe, and fatal illness) from two independent hospitals in China were analyzed by LC-MS. Samples from healthy volunteers and from patients with pneumonia caused by other viruses (i.e. negative RT-PCR for COVID-19) were used as controls. Seven different ML-based models were built: PLS-DA, ANNDA, XGBoostDA, SIMCA, SVM, LREG, and KNN. Results: The PLS-DA model presented the best performance for both datasets, with accuracy rates to predict the diagnosis, severity, and fatality of COVID-19 of 93%, 94%, and 97%, respectively. Low levels of the metabolites ribothymidine, 4-hydroxyphenylacetoylcarnitine and uridine were associated with COVID-19 positivity, whereas high levels of N-acetyl-glucosamine-1-phosphate, cysteinylglycine, methyl isobutyrate, l-ornithine, and 5,6-dihydro-5-methyluracil were significantly related to greater severity and fatality from COVID-19. Conclusion: The PLS-DA model can help to predict SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, severity, and fatality in daily practice. Some biomarkers typically increased in COVID-19 patients’ serum or plasma (i.e. ribothymidine, N-acetyl-glucosamine-1-phosphate, l-ornithine, 5,6-dihydro-5-methyluracil) should be further evaluated as prognostic indicators of the disease.