What We Know of the Prognostic Value of Lymphopenia in SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Background: although by comparing the number of deaths to the total number of cases one may conclude that most of the infected cases are recovering, taking a look at the increasing statistics of deaths shows that sars-cov-2 continues to take its toll. since lymphocytes are the main immune cells battling with rapidly evolving viruses, it comes as no surprise to assume that a decreased number of these propitious soldiers may contribute to poor prognosis of the wide range of viral infections, including covid-19. methods: to provide a better prospect representing the prognostic value of lymphopenia in covid-19, we searched the national library of medicine medline/pubmed and performed a meta-analysis of pertinent literature representing information on the lymphocyte count in covid-19 patients. results: the results of our meta-analysis revealed that the number of lymphocytes retains a specific clinical and biological significance in this infection and lymphopenia is seemingly an important hematological abnormality that contributes to mirror the evolution toward an unfavorable outcome. conclusion: the rapidly evolving nature of covid-19 together with relentless disclosure of novel findings denotes a major limitation to the current study, and further investigations in the field of prognostic biomarkers will definitively pave the way to better manage patients with severe covid-19.