MeMed has developed a rapid test that can predict with greater accuracy than other tests if a COVID-19 patient's condition will deteriorate, according to a September 29 poster presentation at the 2021 American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) annual meeting.
The test can give a response in 15 minutes and help signal if a patient may need lifesaving treatment. It measures the inflammatory biomarkers C-reactive protein, TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand, and interferon gamma-induced protein 10, and uses these values to calculate a COVID-19 severity score based on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 indicating the highest likelihood of a severe outcome.
To develop the test, MeMed researchers first used a rapid point-of-care instrument that the company previously built to measure the biomarkers in 518 COVID-19 patients, 113 of whom had a severe outcome. Next, they created a model using a machine-learning algorithm that serves as the basis for the COVID-19 severity score.
The researchers, led by Dr. Niv Mastboim and Eran Eden, PhD, co-founder and CEO of MeMed, reported that the severity score has an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.86, outperforming other COVID-19 severity stratification tests in terms of accuracy, including the commonly used biomarker interleukin-6, which has an AUC of 0.77.
