A group from internal Medicine II, San Giuseppe Hospital, Empoli, Italy, etc. has reported that Interleukin-6 to lymphocyte (IL-6/Lym) ratio has high power to predict negative outcome in patients with respiratory failure associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8660176/
AUC (0.797, 95% CI: 0.738–0.848) of IL-6/Lym ratio in SARS-CoV-2 related pneumonia was the highest compared with those of all the other analyzed biomarkers and the difference was significant with the exception of IL-6.
Despite the exact pathophysiology mechanism in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) of COVID-19 remains unclear, much studies shows that high levels of IL-6 and low lymphocytes count are biomarkers of cytokine storm and immune response in COVID-19. However the predictive power of these biomarkers is evaluated singularly. Combining two biomarkers by using the ratio between them could increase their predictive power.
In COVID-19 patients lymphocytes count has been included in a lot of ratios with other biomarkers for testing outcomes such as neutrophil/lymphocyte (Neu/Lym) ratio, platelets/Lym ratio, Lym/CRP ratio, lymphocyte to monocyte ratio, eosinophil to lymphocyte ratio . On the other hand, recently IL-6/Lym ratio has been proposed as an interesting prognosticator in patients with COVID-19.
