Machine learning-based prediction of COVID-19 mortality using immunological and metabolic biomarkers

Thomas Wetere Tulu (Co-first Author), Tsz Kin Wan (Co-first Author), Ching Long Chan (Co-first Author), Chun Hei Wu (Co-first Author), Peter Yat Ming Woo, Cee Zhung Steven Tseng, Asmir Vodencarevic, Cristina Menni, Kei Hang Katie Chan*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

42 Downloads (CityUHK Scholars)

Abstract

COVID-19 mortality prediction
Background COVID-19 has become a major global public health problem, despite prevention and efforts. The daily number of COVID-19 cases rapidly increases, and the time and financial costs associated with testing procedure are burdensome.
Method To overcome this, we aim to identify immunological and metabolic biomarkers to predict COVID-19 mortality using a machine learning model. We included inpatients from Hong Kong’s public hospitals between January 1, and September 30, 2020, who were diagnosed with COVID-19 using RT-PCR. We developed three machine learning models to predict the mortality of COVID-19 patients based on data in their electronic medical records. We performed statistical analysis to compare the trained machine learning models which are Deep Neural Networks (DNN), Random Forest Classifier (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) using data from a cohort of 5,059 patients (median age = 46 years; 49.3% male) who had tested positive for COVID-19 based on electronic health records and data from 532,427 patients as controls.
Result We identified top 20 immunological and metabolic biomarkers that can accurately predict the risk of mortality from COVID-19 with ROC-AUC of 0.98 (95% CI 0.96-0.98). Of the three models used, our result demonstrate that the random forest (RF) model achieved the most accurate prediction of mortality among COVID-19 patients with age, glomerular filtration, albumin, urea, procalcitonin, c-reactive protein, oxygen, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, ferritin, glucose, erythrocytes, creatinine, lymphocytes, PH of blood and leukocytes among the most important biomarkers identified. A cohort from Kwong Wah Hospital (131 patients) was used for model validation with ROC-AUC of 0.90 (95% CI 0.84-0.92).
Conclusion We recommend physicians closely monitor hematological, coagulation, cardiac, hepatic, renal and inflammatory factors for potential progression to severe conditions among COVID-19 patients. To the best of our knowledge, no previous research has identified important immunological and metabolic biomarkers to the extent demonstrated in our study.

© The Author(s) 2023.
Original languageEnglish
Article number6
Number of pages14
JournalBMC Digital Health
Volume1
Online published3 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Funding

This work was supported by the Innovation and Technology Fund Public Sector trial Scheme for COVID-19(Project number: SST/141/20GP) and the City University of Hong Kong New Research Initiatives/Infrastructure Support from Central (APRC; grant number 9610401).

Research Keywords

  • Biomarkers
  • Machine learning
  • Random forest classifier
  • Deep neural network
  • COVID-19

Publisher's Copyright Statement

  • This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Machine learning-based prediction of COVID-19 mortality using immunological and metabolic biomarkers'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this