Abstract
Thrombocytopenia is one of the main characteristics of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). This study aimed to evaluate the associations of platelet distribution width (PDW) with the disease severity and critical patients' survival of HFRS. The demographics, clinical data, and white blood cell and platelet parameters including PDW in 260 patients hospitalized for HFRS were analyzed. The results showed that PDW on the first day (PDW1) was positively associated with the disease severity (p = 0.005). Multiple regression analysis showed that in addition to age (odds ratio [OR], 1.091; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.015-1.172) and occurrence of sepsis (OR, 22.283; 95% CI, 2.985-166.325), PDW1 (OR, 0.782; 95% CI, 0.617-0.992) was a risk factor of the mortality, having an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.709 (95% CI, 0.572-0.846, p = 0.013) for predicting mortality, with a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 67% at a cutoff of 16.5 fL, in patients with critical HFRS. These results suggest the potential of PDW at the first day of hospitalization as a valuable parameter for evaluating the severity of HFRS and a moderate parameter for predicting the prognosis of critical HFRS patients. A prospective study in large patient population is needed to validate these findings.