a negative trendp = 0.6
In order to exclude the possibility that the NLR trend was due to a concurrent bacterial or fungal superinfection, we compared the rates of superinfections among patients who had a positive trend with those who had a negative trend and observed that the presence of a superinfection was not associated with a higher NLR trend at admission (χ 2 (1, N = 469) = 0.45, p = 0.6) ( Fig. 4 ).