The role of atherogenic index of plasma in the diagnosis long COVID

Objective: One of the well-known prolonged effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the gradual loss of pulmonary functions, known as ‘long COVID’. Due to the importance of this deleterious condition, several studies have been conducted to investigate predictors of long COVID throughout hospital admission and after hospital discharge. Recently introduced, the atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) has a better predictive value for the prediction of adverse events in COVID-19 patients compared to other biomarkers. This study aimed to explore the role of AIP in the prediction of long COVID among COVID-19 survivors. Material and Methods: We evaluated 52 eligible patients with a diagnosis of long COVID and 80 healthy control subjects with a prior history of COVID-19. To confirm long COVID diagnosis, all subjects underwent a standardized questionnaire which recount the presence or absence of COVID-19-related complaints. All participants’ past medical records and clinical, and demographic characteristics were scanned and underwent comprehensive physical examination and echocardiographic assessment Results: According to our study, body surface area, Troponin T, NT-pro-BNP, and AIP were the independent predictors of long COVID. AIP was the best predictor of long COVID among the aforementioned parameters (p=0.005). To determine the AIP cut-off value for predicting long COVID, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn and the best cut-off value was determined as 0.113 by using the Youden index, (AUC:0.658, 95% CI:0.556-0.760, P=0.002). Conclusion: Our data indicate that AIP is an independent predictor of long COVID.