Scientists have found the likely sequence in which COVID-19 symptoms first appear, an advancement that can help clinicians rule out other diseases, and help patients seek immediate care or decide to self-isolate earlier.
According to the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, the likely sequence of symptoms in patients with COVID-19 is fever, followed by cough, muscle aches, and then nausea, and / or vomiting, and diarrhea.
“This sequence is especially important to know when we have overlapping cycles of diseases such as the flu that coincide with COVID-19 infections,” said study author Peter Kuhn, a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University. of Southern California (USC) in the US.
With this new information, Kuhn said, physicians can determine what steps to take to care for patients, and prevent their condition from deteriorating.
The researchers believe that identifying patients earlier could reduce hospitalization time, as there are better approaches to treatments now for COVID-19 than during the onset of the pandemic.
In the current study, scientists predict the sequence of symptoms from data on symptom incidence rates of more than 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in China, all of which were collected from February 16 to 24 by the World Health Organization (WHO).
They also studied a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases collected from December 11, 2019 to January 29, 2020, by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group through the National Health Commission of China.
To compare the sequence of COVID-19 symptoms with that of influenza, scientists examined influenza data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere, which were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.
“The order of the symptoms is important. Knowing that each disease progresses differently means doctors can identify sooner if someone is likely to have COVID-19, or another disease that could help them make better treatment decisions,” Joseph said. Larsen, author of student from USC
While fever and cough are often associated with a variety of respiratory diseases, including Middle Eastern MIR (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused the 2002-03 pandemic, they said the timing and symptoms in the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract COVID-19 separately.
“The first two symptoms of COVID-19, SARS, and MERS are fever and cough. However, the upper GI tract (nausea / vomiting) seems to be affected before the lower GI tract (diarrhea) in COVID-19, that is. the opposite of MERS and SARS, “the scientists wrote in the study.
According to the study, a very small fraction of patients experienced diarrhea as a first symptom.
“This report suggests that diarrhea as an early symptom indicates a more aggressive disease, because every patient in this dataset who had initially experienced diarrhea had pneumonia or respiratory failure,” the scientists wrote.
“The highest reported symptom is fever, followed by cough or dyspnea, and then finally a small percentage of patients report diarrhea. This sequence confirms the most likely pathways we have determined,” they noted.
