The Faculty of Pharmacy discussed the master’s thesis tagged” Association of Serum Homocysteine Levels with Some Cardiovascular Biomarkers in Iraqi COVID-19 Patients “for student Shahad Sabah Khalid and her supervisor, Lecturer Dr. Zahraa Mohamed Ali, in the Clinical Laboratory Sciences Department. The thesis aims to measure homocysteine, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, D-dimer, ferritin, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte to monocyte ratio (LMR), troponin-I, troponin-T, and LDL-C to HDL-C ratio levels in blood samples of the severe COVID-19 patient group and compare them to the blood levels in the corresponding control group. Demonstrate whether or not there is correlation between homocysteine levels and other measured biomarkers, in the blood of patients diagnosed with severe COVID-19 disease. The thesis included a case-control study, which involved 90 (non-vaccinated for COVID-19) participants 45 of them were hospitalized patients, diagnosed clinically with a severe COVD-19 infection, and with a positive result of nucleic acid amplification testing by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of respiratory samples ,and the other 45 participants were apparently healthy as controls. 6 ml of blood specimens were collected, 2ml were put in an EDTA tube to obtain whole blood used to measure white blood cells counts, 3ml were putted in a gel tube to obtain serum to measure homocysteine, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, troponin-I, and troponin-T, which were measured using Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) specific kits; the remainder 1 ml blood was put in a sodium citrate tube to obtain plasma to measure D-dimer. The results proved that homocysteine, troponin-I, troponin-T, D-dimer, and ferritin increased significantly in severe COVID-19 disease. Homocysteine correlated significantly with cardiac troponin-T, and ferritin, while homocysteine showed no correlation with cardiac troponin-I, high sensitivity c-reactive protein, D-dimer, and LDL-C:HDL-c ratio.
