{"doi":"10.1101/2020.07.30.227553","title":"Circulating Mitochondrial DNA is an Early Indicator of Severe Illness and Mortality from COVID-19","abstract":"Mitochondrial DNA (MT-DNA) are intrinsically inflammatory nucleic acids released by damaged solid organs. Whether the appearance of cell-free MT-DNA is linked to poor COVID-19 outcomes remains undetermined. Here, we quantified circulating MT-DNA in prospectively collected, cell-free plasma samples from 97 subjects with COVID-19 at the time of hospital presentation. Circulating MT-DNA were sharply elevated in patients who eventually died, required ICU admission or intubation. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that high circulating MT-DNA levels is an independent risk factor for all of these outcomes after adjusting for age, sex and comorbidities. Additionally, we found that circulating MT-DNA has a similar or superior area-under-the curve when compared to clinically established measures of systemic inflammation, as well as emerging markers currently of interest as investigational targets for COVID-19 therapy. These results show that high circulating MT-DNA levels is a potential indicator for poor COVID-19 outcomes.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":118392,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":93,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9531,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":337924,"name":"Marlene Cano","orcid":"0000-0002-2368-9256","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":337919,"name":"Lina Ma","orcid":"0000-0002-0970-0893","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":497621,"name":"Dequan Zhou","orcid":"0000-0002-2662-2882","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551338,"name":"Ji Hong Zhu","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259653,"name":"Jane A. O’Halloran","orcid":"0000-0001-8265-9471","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550505,"name":"Charles Goss","orcid":"0000-0003-0031-3288","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246250,"name":"Adriana M. Rauseo","orcid":"0000-0001-9555-2550","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":443821,"name":"Zhiyi Liu","orcid":"0000-0002-8122-8474","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551339,"name":"Valentina Peritore","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":51917,"name":"Monica Rocco","orcid":"0000-0001-8380-3607","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550506,"name":"Alberto Rícci","orcid":"0000-0002-1718-1587","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551340,"name":"Rachele Amodeo","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551341,"name":"Laura Aimati","orcid":null,"position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550507,"name":"Mohsen Ibrahim","orcid":"0000-0002-9288-2359","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":288869,"name":"Ramsey R. Hachem","orcid":"0000-0002-0708-1937","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273856,"name":"Daniel Kreisel","orcid":"0000-0002-7711-8651","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":233402,"name":"Philip A. Mudd","orcid":"0000-0002-3860-5473","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230294,"name":"Hrishikesh S. Kulkarni","orcid":"0000-0003-4830-5084","position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230331,"name":"Andrew E. Gelman","orcid":"0000-0002-0711-6343","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363614,"name":"Davide Scozzi","orcid":"0000-0002-4049-1591","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":65,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:58.531532Z","pmid":"32766574","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}