Pulmonary fibrosis has been identified as a main factor leading to pulmonary dysfunction and poor quality of life in post-recovery
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) survivor's consequent to
SARS-Cov-2 infection. Thus there is an urgent medical need for identification of readily available
biomarkers that in patients with
SARS-Cov-2 infection are able to; (1) identify patients in most need of medical care prior to admittance to an intensive care unit (ICU), and; (2) identify patients post-
infection at risk of developing persistent
fibrosis of lungs with subsequent impaired quality of life and increased morbidity and mortality. An intense amount of research have focused on wound healing and Extracellular Matrix (ECM) remodelling of the lungs related to lung function decline in
pulmonary fibrosis (PF). A range of non-invasive serological
biomarkers, reflecting tissue remodelling, and
fibrosis have been shown to predict risk of acute exacerbations, lung function decline and mortality in PF and other
interstitial lung diseases (
Sand et al. in Respir Res 19:82, 2018). We suggest that lessons learned from such PF studies of the
pathological processes leading to lung function decline could be used to better identify patients infected with SARS-Co-V2 at most risk of acute deterioration or persistent fibrotic damage of the lung and could consequently be used to guide treatment decisions.