COVID-19 associated with immune thrombocytopenia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Prince Mohammed Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital, Saudi Arabia. Northern Border University, Saudi Arabia.

Expert review of hematology. 2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND Immune thrombocytopenia, also known as immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), has emerged as a significant COVID-19 associated complication. This study analyzes the published literature of case reports and case series regarding COVID-19 infection associated with ITP. METHODOLOGY In this systematic review and meta-analysis, a systematic search was conducted through PubMed, Web of Science and Medline through Clarivate, and EBSCO to include the eligible studies. The authors utilized Review Manager 5.4 to conduct quantitative data synthesis for the condition of interest analysis. RESULTS A total of 13 eligible case reports and case series with 42 patients were included in this study; 54.8% of them were males. The pooled mean age of all participants was (59.5 ± 19) years and a median age of 63 years. The estimated mean time from diagnosis with COVID-19 to ITP development was (18.1 ± 21) and the mean time to recovery from ITP was (5.8 ± 4.8) days. The pooled random effect of mean platelet count in the included six studies was (14.52, CI [8.79, 20.25]). CONCLUSION our analysis show that ITP secondary to COVID-19 infection is slightly more prevalent among males (54.8%). Elderly patients were more vulnerable to have the disease as most of the cases were older than 50 years with a median age of 63 years. Most cases developed ITP within 2-3 weeks after COVID-19 infection and recovered in less than one week from ITP.
Study details
Study Design : Systematic Review
Language : eng
Credits : Bibliographic data from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine