Marelize Wilke
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Health24
17 Aug 2020, 08:45
- Symptoms in Covid-19 vary from one patient to another
- However, scientists have found that the order of Covid-19 symptoms differs from other diseases
- Understanding this sequence can help speed up diagnosis and treatment
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the list of potential signs and symptoms has grown significantly.
Because there are so many variables, it can be difficult to tell if a common symptom such as fever or cough indicates that a person has Covid-19, or something else.
But according to scientists from the USC Michelson Center, the order of appearance of symptoms could help doctors diagnose Covid-19 more quickly.
Ordering symptoms can help doctors plan treatment
Not only will the sequence of symptoms help physicians diagnose Covid-19 at an earlier stage, but it will also give them a clearer understanding of which treatments to prioritize.
It may also help doctors rule out other diseases, according to the study led by doctoral candidate Joseph Larsen and his colleagues, with faculty advisors Peter Kuhn and James Hicks, at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience Convergent Science Institute in Cancer.
“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 Kuhn, a USC professor of medicine, biomedical engineering, and aerospace. and mechanical engineering, in a news release. “Physicians can determine what steps to take to care for the patient, and they can prevent the patient’s condition from deteriorating.”
“Given that there are now better approaches to Covid-19 treatments, patients can identify hospital admission time sooner,” said Larsen, lead author of the study.
“The order of the symptoms is important. Knowing that each disease progresses differently means that doctors can identify earlier if someone is likely to have Covid-19, or another disease, which can help them make better treatment decisions,” Larsen explained in the news release.
The scientific findings were published in the journal Frontiers in public health on August 12, 2020.
Upper GI tract likely to be infected first
While fever and a dry cough are the main symptoms of Covid-19 – as with the two diseases SARS and MERS, which were also caused by coronaviruses – the timing of symptoms related to the gastrointestinal system in Covid-19 seems to differ.
According to the researchers, the upper GI channel appears to be affected (nausea and vomiting) before the lower GI channel (diarrhea) in Covid-19, unlike in MERS and SARS where it was the other way around.
They determine the order of symptoms this spring from the rates of symptom incidence in more than 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in China (all of which were collected between February 16 and February 24, 2020, by the World Health Organization). They also studied a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases (collected between December 11, 2019 and January 24, 2020, by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group through the National Health Commission of China.)
The researchers then compared the sequence of Covid-19 symptoms with that of influenza by examining data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere (reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998).
To compare the sequence of Covid-19 symptoms with that of influenza, the researchers examined data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere (reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998).
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Image credit: Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels
