Using a meta-analytic approach, we systematically reviewed and analysed the contribution of MR-proADM to mortality in COVID-19 patients. In this study, we found that MR- proADM had a very good predictive value for the poor prognosis of COVID-19 patients. Increased levels of MR-proADM were independently associated with mortality in COVID-19 patients. These findings also confirm the feasibility of risk stratification by MR- proADM in COVID-19 patients.
COVID-19 patients have a high mortality rate. The mortality rate of in-hospital patients was 12.44% [36], that of ICU patients was 26% [37], and that of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) was 50% [38]. The study population we included had different severities of illness, and the overall mortality rate was 19%. Many studies have used various biomarkers, such as CRP [39–44], PCT [39,43,45,46], IL-6 [39,43,46], WBC[40,47–49], D-dimer[42,44,46,50,51], lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) [39,42–44,46,47], N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) [39,52,53], and Troponin T[39,54], and critical illness score, such as APACHEII [55–57], SOFA [55,56,58–60], SAPS [61–64], and CURB65 [59,61,65], to evaluate the prognosis of patients with COVID-19. The APACHE II and SOFA scoring systems require the worst values of the clinical and biological parameters to be recorded within 24 h of admission [66]. In contrast, biomarkers can be measured rapidly within hours of the admission. WBC, CRP and IL-6 are lack of specificity, and PCT is mainly used to determine if a bacterial infection is present and to guide the use of antibiotics [67].
Adrenomedullin (ADM) is a 52 amino acid peptide hormone that is associated with cardiovascular, endocrine and renal mechanisms regulating water and electrolyte balance [68]. ADM can reduce the permeability of capillaries during septic shock [11], and plays an important role in the regulation of inflammatory mediators, vascular endothelial barrier and microcirculation stability [11,69]. Because of the rapid degradation and clearance of ADM in the cycle, the measurement of ADM in the cycle becomes complex. MR-proADM has a long half-life and is relatively stable in the circulation, which can directly reflect the level of rapidly degraded active ADM peptide. It has been shown that measuring MR-proADM is more suitable for clinical practice [70].
In fact, patients with decreasing PCT concentrations but continuously high MR-proADM concentrations had a significantly increased mortality risk [71], and MR-proADM had an important function in predicting the development of organ failure over 24 h [72], suggesting that MR-proADM may have important clinical value in the early risk stratification of patients with sepsis. Recent studies have proposed that virus-induced endothelial dysfunction and damage, resulting in impaired vascular blood flow, coagulation and leakage, may partially explain the development of organ dysfunction [73,74]. The assessment of MR-proADM may provide important information to explain the pathophysiological mechanisms of vascular endothelial injury and subsequent organ dysfunction in patients with COVID-19.
Our study found that there was a significant difference in the concentration of MR- proADM between the survivors and the nonsurvivors (P < 0.01), the combined sensitivity was 0.88, and the combined specificity was 0.77. These findings are consistent with those of prior studies [71,75,76]. In a recent narrative review [77], directly testing for MR-proADM in the emergency department could contribute to improving the prognostic assessment of patients with sepsis. Spoto et al [78] conducted a retrospective analysis of MR-proADM in 571 consecutive patients with sepsis and found that MR-proADM cut-off values > 3.39 nmol/L in sepsis and > 4.33 nmol/L in septic shock were associated with a significantly higher risk of 90-day mortality. MR-proADM had the strongest association with mortality across all Sepsis-1 and Sepsis-3 subgroups and could facilitate a more accurate classification of low and high disease severity [71]. In our study, 8 studies used OR, and 4 studies used HR as an effect measure to indicate that MR- proADM can be an independent predictor for mortality among patients with COVID-19.
Our study showed that MR-proADM was superior to most biomarkers and critical illness scores in predicting the prognosis of COVID-19 patients [17–19,27,33]. However, few of them indicated the sensitivity and specificity, and we could not calculate the combined effect of each item. A recent study [79] evaluated the usefulness of MR-proADM compared to CRP, PCT, and ferritin in the prognosis of influenza A (H1N1) pneumonia, and found that the initial MR-proADM, ferritin, CRP, and PCT levels effectively determined adverse outcomes and risk of ICU admission and mortality in patients with influenza virus pneumonia. MR-proADM has the highest potency for survival prediction (AUC = 0.853, p < 0.0001). The recently published TRIAGE study [80] is a multinational, prospective, observational cohort study that included consecutive medical patients presenting with a medical urgency at three tertiary-care hospitals. A total of 7,132 patients were included in the final analysis. The study found that MR-proADM was the best biomarker, especially for mortality prediction. Another study [71] indicated that the initial use of MR-proADM within the first 24 h after sepsis diagnosis resulted in the strongest association with short-term, mid-term and long-term mortality compared to all other biomarkers or clinical scores. Other studies also yielded similar results [81,82]. Recently, a meta-analysis suggested that MR-proADM testing alone is poor at identifying invasive bacterial infections in young children [83], which may be related to the population under study, the measurement time and other factors. In addition, it may be more meaningful to determine the time trend of MR-proADM levels in septic patients with pulmonary infection [75].
There are some limitations in our study. First, selection bias and information bias are easily generated because of the observational design and different research locations. Second, there was considerable heterogeneity in some analyses, mainly due to the significant differences in the baseline patient characteristics. Third, converting the median to an average also affects our results. Due to the limited number of articles included, our analysis results may not be accurate, and more studies need to be included for verification in the future.