COVID-19 Outbreaks in Co-Morbid Patients: A Pursuit for Biomarkers

COVID-19 is a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 a new coronavirus that has devastated the world economy, with its rapid spread, causing not only panic but also causing morbidity and mortality. Hence, it was declared a pandemic by WHO in 2019. Further down the lane in 2021-22, researchers and attending health officials observed that the susceptible group who were victims of the novel coronavirus were diabetics, hypertensive, or suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases or other diseases of the lungs or cancers. Furthermore, hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases were important risk factors for progression and unfavourable outcomes in COVID-19 patients. Increased expression of ACE2 was reported in diabetic, hypertensive and obese patients. The ACE2 receptor is the channel for entry of SARS-CoV-2 into the human body, but this receptor is also commonly found on the epithelial cells of several other organs such as the lungs, intestine, kidney, blood vessels and other organs enabling the entry of the coronavirus into these organs causing multiorgan failures. Thus, emphasizing the need for further studies on SARS-CoV-2-specific complications in comorbid patients and the need to identify biomarkers for the onset of the diseases. Interestingly, age is independently not a risk factor as there are reports that besides seniors and elderly people, others in their teens or twenties may develop a severe form of the disease, may require intensive care and may die as well. Hence, inflammatory conditions as evidenced by elevated levels of biomarkers like TNF-alpha, IL-6, cytokine antagonists, etc., could be investigated further to elucidate the mechanism of inflammatory response due to virus infection. Moreover, due to insufficient genetic data, the phenomena of coronavirus S-protein binding towards ACE2 in several organs is still a mystery. Hence, this article attempts to review the etiology and pathophysiology and current scenario of biomarkers for SARS-CoV-2 infections, to identify a panel of biomarkers.