Blood biomarkers for assessing headaches in healthcare workers after wearing biological personal protective equipment in a COVID-19 field-hospital

Abstract The consequences of wearing biosafety equipment by healthcare professionals during their work and the prediction of such consequences need to be assessed. To analyze the role played by different blood biomarkers in predicting the appearance of headaches in healthcare workers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) in a COVID-19 treatment unit, a Prospective cohort study of 38 healthcare workers from a convalescence unit of patients with COVID-19 in a field hospital was performed during April 2020. Blood analysis was carried out before the start of the 4 hours shift of the volunteers equipped with PPE. After decontamination, there were asked if they had suffered from headache, obtaining the binary outcome. This study included 38 participants with a median age of 29 years (25th-75th percentile: 26-44 years old), 73.7% female (28 cases). 44.7% (17 cases) had a headache after wearing PPE for 4 hours. The baseline creatinine value reflected a specific odds ratio in the regression model of 241.36 (95% CI: 2.50-23,295.43; p=0.019), and an AUC of 0.737 (95%CI: 0.57-0.90; p<0.01). Blood creatinine is a good candidate for predicting the appearance of a de novo headache in healthcare workers after wearing PPE for 4 hours in a COVID – 19 unit.