Abstract:
Background: Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) is a growing healthcare and economic concern affecting as many as 10%-30% of those infected with COVID-19. Though the symptoms have been well-documented, they significantly overlap with other common chronic inflammatory conditions which could confound treatment and therapeutic trials.
Methods: A total of 236 patients including 64 with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), 50 with myalgic encephalomyelitis-chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS), 29 with post-treatment Lyme disease (PTLD), and 42 post-vaccine individuals with PASC-like symptoms (POVIP) were enrolled in the study. We performed a 14-plex cytokine/chemokine panel previously described to generate raw data that was normalized and run in a decision tree model using a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm. The algorithm was used to classify these conditions in distinct groups despite their similar symptoms.
Results: PASC, ME-CSF, POVIP, and Acute COVID-19 disease categories were able to be classified by our cytokine hub based CART algorithm with an average F1 score of 0.61 and high specificity (94%).
Conclusions: Proper classification of these inflammatory conditions with very similar symptoms is critical for proper diagnosis and treatment.
Source: Bruce K. Patterson, Jose Guevara-Coto, Edgar B. Francisco et al. Cytokine Hub Classification of PASC, ME-CFS and other PASC-like Conditions, 27 April 2022, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1598634/v1] https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1598634/v1 (Full text)