Skip to main content
Download PDF
  • Research Letter
  • Open access
  • Published:

Role of MR-proADM in the risk stratification of COVID-19 patients assessed at the triage of the Emergency Department

Critical Care volume 25, Article number: 407 (2021) Cite this article

During the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, the Emergency Departments have been overrun with suspicious COVID-19 patients, creating a pressing need to optimize resources through risk stratification already at the triage level.

Mid-regional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM), a more stable fragment of the rapidly degrading active adrenomedullin (ADM) peptide, has been proven a promising biomarker effective in predicting severity and long-term adverse outcomes in pneumonia [1].

Interestingly, when the microcirculatory integrity is deteriorated causing the capillary leak, an alteration of the endothelium barrier function can occur, as during sepsis. It has been demonstrated that in these conditions MR-proADM plasma concentrations tend to increase [2]. Accordingly, Hupf et al. have recently reported high adrenomedullin RNA blood expression in patients with severe COVID-19 disease [3].

In this context, Li et al. hypothesized that the integrity of the epithelial–endothelial barrier was severely interrupted in critical patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia, thus introducing the concept of “viral sepsis” [4].

Although recent studies have demonstrated a predictive value of MR-proADM in critically ill patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia [5], no data are currently available about the risk stratification of patients with a suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection at the triage in the Emergency Department (ED).

The aim of this study was to assess the role of MR-proADM in stratifying the in-hospital mortality risk of COVID-19 triaged patients.

Data from 321 consecutive adult patients (aged > 18 years) admitted at the Emergency Department with a confirmed COVID-19 infection were analyzed. The epidemiological, demographic and clinical data were extracted from the electronic clinical records (Table 1). The study was approved by the local ethics committee (approval number 87/20).

Table 1 Demographic and clinical parameters
Full size table

Blood examinations were done for mid-regional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM; normality value < 0.5 nmol/L), C-reactive protein (CRP; < 5 mg/L), procalcitonin (PCT; < 0.5 ng/mL), D-dimer (< 500 ng/mL), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH; < 220 IU/L).

The endpoint was the overall in-hospital mortality. Associations between candidate variables and endpoint were assessed using both univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. The discriminatory power of the analyzed variables for predicting mortality was tested by means of a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis with area under the ROC curve (AUC) determination.

In COVID-19 patients, MR-proADM assessed at the ED admission showed a good discrimination performance for in-hospital mortality (AUC 0.85) with the optimal cutoff of 1105 as obtained with the Youden index. ROC curves and AUC resulted significantly greater for MR-proADM as compared to the other biomarkers for the primary endpoint, i.e., in-hospital mortality, except for CRP (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Association of candidate biomarkers with mortality: AUROC area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. MR-proADM, mid-regional proadrenomedullin; CRP, C-reactive protein; PCT, procalcitonin; LDH, lactate dehydrogenase

Full size image

Pooling together both clinical and laboratory variables in a multivariate analysis and considering the whole observation period, all biomarkers, except PCT, seems to play a key role in the mortality risk stratification at the admission in the Emergency Department. In fact, patients with a value of MR-proADM higher than the cutoff value of 1.105 show a threefold increase in mortality (OR 2.97; IC 1.7–5.28).

To our knowledge, this is the first study focused on the ability of new, as MR-proADM, and traditional biomarkers in the risk stratification of patients with COVID-19 infection at the Emergency Department admission. In particular, our results suggest that above all the MR-proADM, among the other biomarkers analyzed, might play a key predictive role in the early risk stratification of patients with COVID-19 infection. This relevant information might greatly contribute to optimize the hospital resources and to hasten the decision-making process of the emergency physician.

Availability of data and material

Yes.

References

  1. Legramante JM, Mastropasqua M, Susi B, Porzio O, Mazza M, Agrippino GM, et al. Prognostic performance of MR-pro-adrenomedullin in patients with community acquired pneumonia in the Emergency Department compared to clinical severity scores PSI and CURB. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(11):e0187702.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Temmesfeld-Wollbruck B, Hocke AC, Suttorp N, Hippenstiel S. Adrenomedullin and endothelial barrier function. Thromb Haemos. 2007;98(5):944–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Hupf J, Mustroph J, Hanses F, Even K, Maier LS, Jungbauer CG. RNA-expression of adrenomedullin increased in patients with severe COVID-19. Crit Care. 2020;24(1):527.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Li H, Liu L, Zhang D, Xu J, Dai H, Tang N, et al. SARS-CoV-2 and viral sepsis: observations and hypotheses. Lancet. 2020;395(10235):1517–20.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Leonardis F, Minieri M, Lia MS, Formica V, Dauri M, Colella DF, et al. Early predictive value of MR-proADM in critically ill patients with Covid-19: an observational study in the Emergency Department. J Emerg Med Care. 2021;4(1):103.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Authors wish to thank ThermoFisher Scientific B·R·A·H·M·S GmbH for their support.

Funding

No.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Medicine and Unit of Laboratory Medicine, Tor Vergata University Hospital, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Marilena Minieri & Sergio Bernardini

  2. Emergency Medicine, Emergency Department, Tor Vergata University Hospital, Rome, Italy

    Vito N. Di Lecce

  3. Unit of Laboratory Medicine, Tor Vergata University Hospital, Rome, Italy

    Maria Stella Lia

  4. Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Massimo Maurici

  5. Department of Systems Medicine and Emergency Medicine, Emergency Department, Tor Vergata University Hospital, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Jacopo M. Legramante

Authors
  1. Marilena Minieri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vito N. Di Lecce
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maria Stella Lia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Massimo Maurici
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Sergio Bernardini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jacopo M. Legramante
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

MM and JML helped in conceptualization and manuscript editing; VNDL was involved in statistical analysis and data interpretation; MSL organized and interpreted the data; MM helped in statistical analysis; SB conceptualized the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marilena Minieri.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Yes.

Consent for publication

N/A.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Minieri, M., Di Lecce, V.N., Lia, M.S. et al. Role of MR-proADM in the risk stratification of COVID-19 patients assessed at the triage of the Emergency Department. Crit Care 25, 407 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-021-03834-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-021-03834-9

Critical Care

ISSN: 1364-8535