Foy Brody H, Carlson Jonathan C T, Aguirre Aaron D, Higgins John M
Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 28;16(1):1113. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-56251-9.
Complete blood count indices and their ratios are associated with adverse clinical outcomes for many acute illnesses, but the mechanisms generating these associations are not fully understood. Recent identification of a consistent pattern of white blood cell and platelet count co-regulation during acute inflammatory recovery provides a potentially unifying explanation. Here we show that the platelet-to-white-cell ratio, which was selected based on this conserved recovery pattern, is more strongly associated with mortality than other blood count markers and ratios in four important illnesses involving acute inflammation: COVID-19, acute heart failure, myocardial infarction, and stroke. Patients recovering well from these acute illnesses tend to follow a joint white cell and platelet trajectory that can be reduced to this one-dimensional ratio. The platelet-to-white-cell ratio's association with prognosis is consistent with recently identified inflammatory dynamics and may provide a convenient and interpretable summary of patient inflammatory state.
全血细胞计数指标及其比值与许多急性疾病的不良临床结局相关，但产生这些关联的机制尚未完全明确。最近发现，在急性炎症恢复过程中，白细胞和血小板计数存在一致的共同调节模式，这提供了一种潜在的统一解释。在此，我们表明，基于这种保守的恢复模式选择的血小板与白细胞比值，在四种涉及急性炎症的重要疾病（新冠病毒病、急性心力衰竭、心肌梗死和中风）中，比其他血细胞计数标志物和比值与死亡率的关联更强。从这些急性疾病中恢复良好的患者往往遵循白细胞和血小板的联合轨迹，该轨迹可简化为这一维度的比值。血小板与白细胞比值与预后的关联与最近发现的炎症动态一致，可能为患者的炎症状态提供一个方便且可解释的总结。
