Application Aids Identification of Patients with COVID-19 Risk in A&E

The MDW-SARS CoV-2 diagnostic test from Beckman Coulter has achieved the CE Mark for its MDW application as an aid in identifying adult patients with risk of having SARS-CoV-2 viral infection when presenting to the Accident & Emergency department (A&E).

单核细胞分布宽度(Monocyte Distribution Width, MDW)是单核细胞在受到细菌、病毒或真菌感染时形态学变化增加的衡量标准。MDW是一种体外诊断参数，自动报告为全血细胞计数(CBC)的一部分，并在急诊科例行要求。MDW是贝克曼库尔特(Beckman Coulter)分析仪唯一专有的、经监管清除的血液生物标志物，可帮助识别急诊科成人患者严重感染和败血症的风险。

Several influential European studies reported an elevation of MDW in patients diagnosed with COVID-19. These studies have evidenced that MDW is significantly higher in patients with COVID-19 than those without, thus suggesting that upfront MDW measurement while awaiting SARS-CoV-2 molecular results could allow for prompt differential diagnoses in emergency settings. The observations are consistent with the current understanding of COVID-19 as a multi-organ disease resulting from an increased response in circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines through the activity of morphologically differentiated monocytes.

Tommaso Trenti, Director of the Laboratory Medicine Department of the Local Health Unit in Modena, Italy, and investigator in the study published in Nature explained: “The morphology of monocytes changes when the activation of the immune system triggers a stimulus, such as in case of bacterial or viral infections. Thanks to the new DxH 900 haematology analyser for CBC we can measure the nature of these cellular alterations in the lab. I am very pleased that our centre was able to contribute towards confirming the role of this new test, which now also has the CE mark approval for IVD devices, which means it can now be used on COVID-19 patients.”

MDW-SARS CoV-2是一种高敏感性试验(87%)，NPV高(96%)。它使医生能够对没有RT-PCR数据或与临床表现相矛盾的患者进行更准确的COVID-19风险评估，从而能够对急诊室的患者处置做出更好的决定。

意大利阿雷佐圣多纳托医院实验室和输血医部主任、发表在《临床化学学报》上的这项研究的首席研究员Agostino Ognibene博士说:“一年前，我们就已经认为MDW结果是COVID-19患者的一个有用参数，这也是因为它的速度和容易获得。”“单核细胞群是参与COVID-19免疫反应的第一个元素。这种反应是单核细胞形态学变化的基础，反映在MDW参数的改变，这可以通过简单的CBC得到。发现病毒的侵袭性和患者的反应状态与MDW参数有关，因此可以将其纳入患者的临床评估。该测试获得了IVD设备CE批准，这是向前迈出的重要一步，证实了我们在阿雷佐医疗中心进行的研究结果。”

Testing and screening for the novel MDW haematologic biomarker is available on both Beckman CoulterDxH 900andDxH 690Thaematology analysers as a part of a CBC-DIFF.

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