scholarly journals The Clinical and Radiological Manifestations in Coronavirus Disease 2019 With Negative Nucleic Acid Results

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanjing Lang ◽  
Junwei Su ◽  
Wenrui Wu ◽  
Hong Zhao ◽  
Shihong Ying ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was a new emerging disease with high infectiousness. Its diagnosis primarily depended on real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results. This study investigated epidemiological, clinical, and radiological characteristics of COVID-19 with negative RT-PCR results before confirmation. Methods Patients with COVID-19 were enrolled and divided into 2 groups: a negative group with negative RT-PCR results before confirmation and a positive group with positive results at the first detection. Epidemiological and clinical features were compared. Dynamic chest computerized tomography (CT) images of the negative group were evaluated. Results Ninety-nine laboratory-confirmed patients with COVID-19 including 8 patients (8%) with negative RT-PCR results were included. Patients from the negative group had similar epidemiological features: the average age (50.25 ± 13.27 years in the negative group and 53.70 ± 16.64 years in the positive group) and gender distribution (males made up 50% of the negative group and 62.6% of the positive group) were comparable. No significant differences were observed in clinical symptoms between the 2 groups. We found that fever was the most common symptom for both groups, followed by cough, expectoration, chest distress, fatigue, and gastroenterological symptoms. Moreover, ground-glass opacities and consolidations were the main manifestation in chest CT of patients with COVID-19 with or without confirmed RT-PCR results. Conclusions Regardless of initial RT-PCR results, patients with COVID-19 had similar epidemiological, clinical, and chest CT features. Our study suggests value from early chest CT scans in COVID-19 screening and dynamic significance of radiology in disease monitoring should guide clinical decisions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Ozüdogru Osman ◽  
Gunes Bolatli ◽  
Fatih Tas

It turned out that the cause of pneumonia cases that occurred in China was due to SARS-CoV-2. The aim is to compare chest computer tomography and Revers-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction methods used in the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease with each other and to evaluate this disease with risk factors. The study was carried out on 66 patients. Epidemiological history, clinical symptoms, chest CT and RT-PCR results of the cases were examined. RT-PCR results of 1, 4, and 7 days were evaluated for each case with positive chest CT results. Thirty-seven of them were found to be positive on day 1, 5 of them were found to be positive on day 4, and 2 of them were found to be positive on day seven from 52 patients whose RT-PCR results were examined. In the remaining 8 cases, no positive findings were found. The most common findings are; cough (78.8%), fever (55.8%), and shortness of breath (28.8%). It was observed that 51.9% of the cases had chronic disease history and 50% of the patients using cigarettes had bilateral lung involvement in their CT results. Seven cases received intensive care support, 3 cases were intubated. Two of the intubated cases were exitus (3,8%). The positive results of RT-PCR were found to be negative in most of the cases which have positive chest CT; suggests that chest CT is more reliable in making a diagnosis.  Therefore, evaluating chest CT results with RT-PCR can be an appropriate alternative approach in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. However, in order to be fully diagnosed, the patient's history, chronic diseases, age, symptoms, imaging, blood, and test findings must all be considered as a whole.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Taisuke Kazuyori ◽  
Akihito Sato ◽  
Yasuhiro Morimoto ◽  
Kazuyoshi Kuwano

Introduction. The SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test is useful for diagnosing COVID-19, and the RT-PCR positive rate is an important indicator for estimating the incidence rate and number of infections. COVID-19 pneumonia is also associated with characteristic findings on chest CT, which can aid in diagnosis. Methods. We retrospectively evaluated patient background characteristics, the number of cases, the positivity rate, and chest CT findings for positive and negative cases in 672 patients who underwent RT-PCR for suspected COVID-19 at our hospital between April 3 and August 28, 2020. In addition, we compared trends in the positive rates at approximately weekly intervals with trends in the number of new infections in Machida City, Tokyo. Results. The study included 323 men and 349 women, with a median age of 46 years (range: 1 month–100 years). RT-PCR findings were positive in 37 cases, and the positive rate was 5.51%. Trends in the positive rate at our hospital and the number of new COVID-19 cases in the city were similar during the study period. Among patients with positive results, 15 (40.5%) had chest CT findings, and 14 had bilateral homogeneous GGOs. Among patients with negative results, 190 had chest CT findings at the time of examination, and 150 were diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia or bronchitis, with main findings consisting of consolidations and centrilobular opacities. Only 11 of these patients exhibited bilateral homogeneous GGOs. Conclusion. Bilateral homogeneous GGOs are characteristic of COVID-19 pneumonia and may aid in the diagnosis of COVID-19.


Open Medicine ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 332-337
Author(s):  
Xiaoli Li ◽  
Lei Rong ◽  
Peiyan Zhang ◽  
Jian Xu ◽  
Yan Rong

Abstract Aim We compared the clinical characteristics of patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) positive and negative anal swabs during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recovery and investigated the clinical significance and influence factors of anal swab detection. Methods This study retrospectively analyzed 23 moderate COVID-19 patients in the recovery phase. They were divided into anal swab positive group (n = 13) (negative for pharyngeal swabs but positive for anal swabs) and anal swab negative group (n = 10) (negative for pharyngeal and anal swabs). The epidemiology, clinical symptoms, time of pharyngeal swabs turning negative, and laboratory results were compared. Results The time of pharyngeal swabs turning negative in the anal swab positive group was 6 (5–8.5) days, significantly longer than that in the anal swab negative group (1 (1–4.25) days), P = 0.0002). The platelet count of the anal swab positive group was significantly lower than that of the anal swab negative group (198 (135–235) × 109/L vs 240.5 (227–264.75) × 109/L, P = 0.0248). No significant difference was observed between the two groups in other variables. Conclusions The time of pharyngeal swab turning negative in anal swab positive patients is longer than that in anal swab negative patients. The platelet count can be used as an indicator for viral infection evaluation. For patients with a longer time of pharyngeal swabs turning negative, the combined testing of the anal swab and platelet counts may help to avoid pharyngeal swab false negatives, premature discharge, and the possibility of fecal-oral transmission.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Khatami ◽  
Mohammad Saatchi ◽  
Seyed Saeed Tamehri Zadeh ◽  
Zahra Sadat Aghamir ◽  
Alireza Namazi Shabestari ◽  
...  

AbstractNowadays there is an ongoing acute respiratory outbreak caused by the novel highly contagious coronavirus (COVID-19). The diagnostic protocol is based on quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and chests CT scan, with uncertain accuracy. This meta-analysis study determines the diagnostic value of an initial chest CT scan in patients with COVID-19 infection in comparison with RT-PCR. Three main databases; PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, and EMBASE were systematically searched for all published literature from January 1st, 2019, to the 21st May 2020 with the keywords "COVID19 virus", "2019 novel coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus", "2019-nCoV", "X-Ray Computed Tomography", "Polymerase Chain Reaction", "Reverse Transcriptase PCR", and "PCR Reverse Transcriptase". All relevant case-series, cross-sectional, and cohort studies were selected. Data extraction and analysis were performed using STATA v.14.0SE (College Station, TX, USA) and RevMan 5. Among 1022 articles, 60 studies were eligible for totalizing 5744 patients. The overall sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of chest CT scan compared to RT-PCR were 87% (95% CI 85–90%), 46% (95% CI 29–63%), 69% (95% CI 56–72%), and 89% (95% CI 82–96%), respectively. It is important to rely on the repeated RT-PCR three times to give 99% accuracy, especially in negative samples. Regarding the overall diagnostic sensitivity of 87% for chest CT, the RT-PCR testing is essential and should be repeated to escape misdiagnosis.


Author(s):  
Youssriah Yahia Sabri ◽  
Mohamed Mohsen Tolba Fawzi ◽  
Eman Zaki Nossair ◽  
Safaa Mohamed El-Mandooh ◽  
Amira Aly Hegazy ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak was officially announced as a global pandemic by the WHO on March 11th 2020. Thorough understanding of CT imaging features of COVID-19 is essential for effective patient management; rationalizing the need for relevant research. The aim of this study was to analyze the chest CT findings of patients with real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) proved COVID-19 admitted to four Egyptian hospitals. The recently published RSNA expert consensus statement on reporting COVID-19 chest CT findings was taken into consideration. Results Normal CT “negative for COVID-19” was reported in 26.1% of our RT-PCR proved COVID-19 cases. In descending order of prevalence, imaging findings of the positive CT studies (73.9%) included GGO (69%), consolidation (49.7%), crazy paving (15.4%), and peri-lobular fibrosis (40.6%). These showed a dominantly bilateral (68.2%), peripheral (72.4%), and patchy (64.7%) distribution. Remarkably, thymic hyperplasia was identified in 14.3% of studies. According to the RSNA consensus, CT findings were classified as typical in 68.9%, indeterminate in 3.6%, and atypical in 1.4% of the evaluated CT studies. Conclusion Although COVID-19 cannot be entirely excluded by chest CT, it can be distinguished in more than two-thirds of cases; making CT a widely available, non-invasive, and rapid diagnostic tool.


Author(s):  
Damiano Caruso ◽  
Francesco Pucciarelli ◽  
Marta Zerunian ◽  
Balaji Ganeshan ◽  
Domenico De Santis ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose To evaluate the potential role of texture-based radiomics analysis in differentiating Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pneumonia from pneumonia of other etiology on Chest CT. Materials and methods One hundred and twenty consecutive patients admitted to Emergency Department, from March 8, 2020, to April 25, 2020, with suspicious of COVID-19 that underwent Chest CT, were retrospectively analyzed. All patients presented CT findings indicative for interstitial pneumonia. Sixty patients with positive COVID-19 real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and 60 patients with negative COVID-19 RT-PCR were enrolled. CT texture analysis (CTTA) was manually performed using dedicated software by two radiologists in consensus and textural features on filtered and unfiltered images were extracted as follows: mean intensity, standard deviation (SD), entropy, mean of positive pixels (MPP), skewness, and kurtosis. Nonparametric Mann–Whitney test assessed CTTA ability to differentiate positive from negative COVID-19 patients. Diagnostic criteria were obtained from receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results Unfiltered CTTA showed lower values of mean intensity, MPP, and kurtosis in COVID-19 positive patients compared to negative patients (p = 0.041, 0.004, and 0.002, respectively). On filtered images, fine and medium texture scales were significant differentiators; fine texture scale being most significant where COVID-19 positive patients had lower SD (p = 0.004) and MPP (p = 0.004) compared to COVID-19 negative patients. A combination of the significant texture features could identify the patients with positive COVID-19 from negative COVID-19 with a sensitivity of 60% and specificity of 80% (p = 0.001). Conclusions Preliminary evaluation suggests potential role of CTTA in distinguishing COVID-19 pneumonia from other interstitial pneumonia on Chest CT.


Medicinus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Aziza Ghanie Icksan ◽  
Muhammad Hafiz ◽  
Annisa Dian Harlivasari

<p><strong>Background : </strong>The first case of COVID-19 in Indonesia was recorded in March 2020. Limitation of reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has put chest CT as an essential complementary tool in the diagnosis and follow up treatment for COVID-19. Literatures strongly suggested that High-Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) is essential in diagnosing typical symptoms of COVID-19 at the early phase of disease due to its superior sensitivity  (97%) compared to chest x-ray (CXR).</p><p>The two cases presented in this case study showed the crucial role of chest CT with HRCT to establish the working diagnosis and follow up COVID-19 patients as a complement to RT-PCR, currently deemed a gold standard.<strong></strong></p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
JunYu Ding ◽  
Changxin Liu ◽  
Zhao Wang ◽  
Hua Guo ◽  
Kan Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background:The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been spreading globally. The information regarding the characteristics and prognosis of antibody non-responders with COVID-19 is scarce.Method: In this retrospective, single-center study, we included all the patients with confirmed COVID-19 using real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) admitted to the Fire God Mountain hospital from February 3, 2020, to April 14, 2020. A total of 1921 patients were divided into the antibody-negative group (n=94) and antibody-positive group (n=1827), and the 1:1 propensity score matching (PSM) was used to match two groups.Results: In the antibody negative group, 40 patients (42.6%) were male, 54 patients (57.4%) were female, and 49 patients (52.1%) were older than 65 years old. Cough was the most common symptoms in the antibody negative group. White blood cell counts (WBC) 6.6×109/L [5.0, 9.1], Neutrophils 4.3×109/L [3.1, 6.6], C-reactive protein 7.3 mg/L [1.3, 49.0], Procalcitonin (PCT) 0.1 ng/mL [0.0, 0.2], Interleukin-6 (IL-6) 64.2 [1.5, 28.7], Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) 193.8 U/L [154.9,260.6], Creatine kinase 60.5 U/L [40.5, 103.7], Creatine kinase isoenzyme 10.3 ng/mL [8.2, 14.5], Urea nitrogen 5.3 mmol/L [4.0, 8.7] and Creatinine 77.7 μmol/L [60.6, 98.7] were significantly higher in antibody negative patients than in antibody positive group (P<0.005). The days of nucleic acid negative conversion in the antibody negative group was shorter than that in the antibody positive group (P < 0.001). Meanwhile, the hospitalization time of antibody negative patients was shorter than that of antibody positive patients (8.0 [6.0, 10.0] VS 13.0 [8.2, 23.0], P < 0.001).Conclusion: Some COVID-19 patients without specific antibodies had mild symptoms, but the inflammatory reaction caused by innate clinical immunity was more intense than those with antibodies, and the virus was cleared faster. The production of specific antibodies was unnecessary for SARS-CoV-2 clearance, and non-specific immune responses played an essential role in virus clearance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (15) ◽  
pp. 756-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dahai Zhao ◽  
Feifei Yao ◽  
Lijie Wang ◽  
Ling Zheng ◽  
Yongjun Gao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has raised world concern since it emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The infection may result in severe pneumonia with clusters of illness onsets. Its impacts on public health make it paramount to clarify the clinical features with other pneumonias. Methods Nineteen COVID-19 and 15 other patients with pneumonia (non-COVID-19) in areas outside of Hubei were involved in this study. Both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients were confirmed to be infected using throat swabs and/or sputa with/without COVID-2019 by real-time RT-PCR. We analyzed the demographic, epidemiological, clinical, and radiological features from those patients, and compared the differences between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19. Results All patients had a history of exposure to confirmed cases of COVID-19 or travel to Hubei before illness. The median (IQR) duration was 8 (6–11) and 5 (4–11) days from exposure to onset in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases, respectively. The clinical symptoms were similar between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19. The most common symptoms were fever and cough. Fifteen (78.95%) COVID-19 but 4 (26.67%) non-COVID-19 patients had bilateral involvement while 17 COVID-19 patients (89.47%) but 1 non-COVID-19 patient (6.67%) had multiple mottling and ground-glass opacity on chest CT images. Compared with non-COVID-19, COVID-19 presents remarkably more abnormal laboratory tests, including AST, ALT, γ-GT, LDH, and α-HBDH. Conclusions The COVID-19 infection has onsets similar to other pneumonias. CT scan may be a reliable test for screening COVID-19 cases. Liver function damage is more frequent in COVID-19 than non-COVID-19 patients. LDH and α-HBDH may be considerable markers for evaluation of COVID-19.


Blood ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 120 (21) ◽  
pp. 2510-2510
Author(s):  
Leyre Bento ◽  
Mi Kwon ◽  
Ismael Buno ◽  
Carolina Martinez-Laperche ◽  
Javier Anguita ◽  
...  

Abstract Abstract 2510 Relapse remains the main cause of treatment failure in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in first remission (CR1) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT). The detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) in AML has improved in the past years with multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) and molecular analysis (RT-PCR). However the prognostic impact of pre-transplantation MRD and the outcome after SCT has not been well studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate pre-transplantation MRD in patients in first remission undergoing myeloablative allogeneic SCT. We retrospectively studied 35 consecutive patients receiving myeloablative SCT for AML in first cytologic remission after intensive chemotherapy with available MRD determination before transplant. MRD was studied by 4-color MFC on bone marrow aspirates, and quantitative RT-PCR (NPM1, WT1, MLL) on bone marrow and/or peripheral blood samples obtained within thirty days before transplant. Thirty-five patients consecutively transplanted in our institution between 1999 and 2012, and for which pre-transplant MRD data was available were analyzed (Table 1). Eighteen showed negative MRD pre-transplant whereas 17 showed positive values. Characteristics of patients were homogeneous between both groups, including number of chemotherapy cycles received before transplantation (Table 1). Within the MRD-negative group, 17 patients showed negative MRD by MFC (12 of them showed negative values also by PCR) and 1 patient showed negative MRD by PCR (MFC not available). Within the MRD-positive group, 9/17 (52%) patients showed MRD-positive values by MFC: in 5 cases MRD was also detected by PCR, only 1 showed negative PCR and in the remaining 3 cases, PCR was not available. On the other hand, in 8/17 (47%) patients MRD was not detected by MFC, however, PCR detected MRD in all of the cases in bone marrow (2), peripheral blood (4) or both samples (2). With a median follow-up of the whole series of 23 months, 2-years estimates of overall survival were 82% (95% CI, 97–55) and 30% (95% CI, 3–71) for MRD-negative and MRD-positive patients (p=0.045), respectively. Cumulative incidence of relapse were 21% (95% CI, 5–48) and 56% (95% CI 10–73) for MRD-negative and MRD-positive patients (p=0.11). In the MRD-negative group, cause of death was toxicity in 11% of the cases and relapse in 11%, while in the MRD-positive group, 17% of patients died due to toxicity and 23% due to relapse. Conclusions: Our data shows that the presence of MRD before allogeneic SCT in patients with AML in CR1 is associated with a significant worse OS rate compared to patients with negative MRD, as well as a tendency towards a higher risk of relapse. The detection of MRD by MFC correlates with the detection by PCR in most of the cases. However, in a significant group of patients, MRD was detected only by PCR. This could be related to differences in sensitivity between both methods. Further studies including larger series are needed to confirm these observations. Table 1 Patient and Disease Characteristics by MRD status Pre-transplant MRD MRD-negative MRD-positive N=35 18 17 Age at transplant (median, R) 36 (19-62) 42 (19-68) Gender (male/female) 8/10 12/5 Cytogenetics and molecular markers     Normal/Intermediate risk 77% 83%     FLT3+ 28% 27%     NPM1+/FLT3- 6% 7%     FLT3-/NPM1- 28% 40%     High-risk 22% 17% Secondary AML 16% 6% Cycles pre-transplantation (median, R) 3 (2-5) 3 (2-5) MRD detection     MFC only 27% 18%     RT-PCR only 5% 0%     Both 68% 82% Donor*     HLA-identical sibling 50% 35%     HLA-matched unrelated 22% 29%     SCU-dual 22% 24%     HLA-haploidentical related 6% 12% acute GVHD II-IV (n°/patients at risk) 44% (8/18) 24% (4/17) chronic GVHD lim/ext (n°/patients at risk) 53% (8/15) 57% (8/14) MRD: minimal residual disease, MFC: multiparametric flow cytometry, RT-PCR: real time PCR, GVHD: graft vs host disease, SCU-dual: single cord blood with co-infusion of selected CD34+ cells from a third party HLA-mismatched donor. *The MRD negative group includes 2 MAC SCU-dual cases with primary graft failure rescued immediatly by a second graft (1 Dual and 1 Haplo) using a RIC regimen. The MRD positive group includes 1 MAC SCU-dual case rescued immediatly by a second graft (1 Haplo). Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


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