scholarly journals Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 pneumonia in Zhejiang province, China: a description of early stage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caixia Gong ◽  
Cheng Ma ◽  
Shumin Li ◽  
Yunmei Yang ◽  
Qin Zhang

Abstract BackgroundThe outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus since December, 2019, has now causing nearly 75 thousand confirmed cases in China (until paper preparing). This epidemic has posed significant threats to international health and the economy. Zhejiang province, which once had the 2nd most accumulative cases among all provinces, has now dropped to top No.5 (until paper preparing). It had a high discharge rates (43.86%) from hospital and the lowest death rate among all top 5 epidemic provinces, this drew our attention to the epidemiological, clinical characteristics and local government engagement of this region.MethodsIn this study, we included all confirmed cases of COVID-19 pneumonia in Zhejiang province from Jan 21 to Feb 11, 2020. All data come from cases issued by Zhejiang provincial health commission.ResultsUntil Feb 11, 2020, 1143 cases were confirmed in Zhejiang province. We analysed the cases growth information in Zhejiang province and age, gender, severe cases percent, the source of the patients, the time of disease onset to confirm and the clinical symptoms of the patients. We also compared the clinical symptoms of elders and the young.ConclusionsThe patients in Zhejiang province had no age and gender preference, and the average time of disease onset to confirm was 5.9 days. The clinical symptoms were mainly fever, cough and weakness, similarly with before reported. The difference between elders and younger are not significant. Until paper preparing, Zhejiang province has very high discharge rate and low death rate, low cases increase rate in China.

2022 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenkui Hu ◽  
Xing Huang ◽  
Jianguo Zhang ◽  
Shixiang Fu ◽  
Daoyin Ding ◽  
...  

Background: As delta variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) prevailed in the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, its clinical characteristics with the difference from those of wild-type strains have been little studied.Methods: We reported one cohort of 341 wild-type patients with COVID-19 admitted at Wuhan, China in 2020 and the other cohort of 336 delta variant patients with COVID-19 admitted at Yangzhou, China in 2021, with comparisons of their demographic information, medical history, clinical manifestation, and hematological data. Furthermore, within the delta variant cohort, patients with none, partial, and full vaccination were also compared to assess vaccine effectiveness.Findings: For a total of 677 patients with COVID-19 included in this study, their median age was 53.0 years [interquartile range (IQR): 38.0–66.0] and 46.8% were men. No difference was found in age, gender, and percentage of patients with the leading comorbidity between wild-type and delta variant cohorts, but delta variant cohort showed a lessened time interval between disease onset to hospitalization, a reduced portion of patients with smoking history, and a lowered frequency of clinical symptoms. For hematological parameters, most values demonstrated significant differences between wild-type and delta variant cohorts, while full vaccination rather than partial vaccination alleviated the disease condition. This reflected the viremic effect of delta variant when vaccination succeeds or fails to protect.Interpretation: Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may cause severe disease profiles, but timely diagnosis and full vaccination could protect patients with COVID-19 from worsened disease progression.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiquan Zhao ◽  
Li Jian ◽  
Yuguo Zhou ◽  
Jiandong Shang ◽  
Yan Ning ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: According to the data from the joint investigative team of the WHO and China, the fatality rate in Wuhan is 5.8%and 0.7% in the rest of China. Most of the patients who have died have had chronic diseases or advanced age, and patients with critical COVID-19 have the highest death rate. Patients with critical COVID-19 are the main focus of research on treatment. However, there are few reports on critical COVID-19 patients in China and worldwide. It will help other researchers and clinicians around the world for similar cases.Purpose: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is highly infectious and has a high fatality rate.This paper summarizes and analyses the clinical characteristics of patients with critical COVID-19 to improve clinicians' understanding of this disease. Methods: We selected 16 patients with critical COVID-19 who were treated in the ICU of a grade A hospital in Wuhan from February to March 2020. Then, we collected the clinical data and analysed their general conditions, clinical symptoms, blood tests, CT scans and treatments. Results: Patients with critical COVID-19 had comorbidities (87.5%), and the main symptoms were low or moderate fever (75%), cough and expectoration (68.75%), and multiple lesions in both lungs (100%). 2. Patients with critical COVID-19 were divided into the non-surviving and surviving groups, and the interleukin-6 (IL-6) level and CD4/CD8 ratio were significantly different (P<0.05). 3. On chest CT, multiple patchy lesions were observed in both lungs, mainly as patchy infected lesions, partial consolidation, ground-glass opacities, and interstitial changes. 4. There were 10 patients (62.5%) who survived and 6 (37.5%) who died. Conclusion: Critical COVID-19 is mainly characterized by low or moderate fever, cough and sputum and often occurs in people with chronic disease.Chest CT showed multiple patchy ground-glass opacities and consolidation. For critically ill patients, it is important to monitor interleukin-6 (IL-6) and CD4/CD8 ratio. Early treatment involves thymalfasin, immunoglobulin and other immune-enhancing treatments, and a large dose of ulinastatin can reduce plasma levels of inflammatory factors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsófia Hayden ◽  
Beáta Bóné ◽  
Gergely Orsi ◽  
Monika Szots ◽  
Ferenc Nagy ◽  
...  

Background: In our previous single-center study of autoimmune encephalitis (AE) related autoantibody test results we found positivity in 60 patients out of 1,034 with suspected AE from 2012 through 2018 as part of a Hungarian nationwide program. In our current multicenter retrospective study, we analyzed the clinical characteristics and outcome of AE patients with positive neuronal cell surface autoantibody test results.Methods: A standard online questionnaire was used to collect demographic and clinical characteristics, laboratory and imaging data, therapy and prognosis of 30 definitive AE patients in four major clinical centers of the region.Results: In our study, 19 patients were positive for anti-NMDAR (63%), 6 patients (20%) for anti-LGI1, 3 patients for anti-GABABR (10%) and 3 patients for anti-Caspr2 (10%) autoantibodies. Most common prodromal symptoms were fever or flu-like symptoms (10/30, 33%). Main clinical features included psychiatric symptoms (83%), epileptic seizures (73%) and memory loss (50%). 19 patients (63%) presented with signs of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation, which occurred more frequently in elder individuals (p = 0.024), although no significant differences were observed in sex, tumor association, time to diagnosis, prognosis and immunotherapy compared to AE patients without CNS inflammatory markers. Anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients were in more severe condition at the disease onset (p = 0.028), although no significant correlation between mRS score, age, sex and immunotherapy was found. 27% of patients (n = 8) with associated tumors had worse outcome (p = 0.045) than patients without tumor. In most cases, immunotherapy led to clinical improvement of AE patients (80%) who achieved a good outcome (mRS ≤ 2; median follow-up 33 months).Conclusion: Our study confirms previous publications describing characteristics of AE patients, however, differences were observed in anti-NMDAR encephalitis that showed no association with ovarian teratoma and occurred more frequently among young males. One-third of AE patients lacked signs of inflammation in both CSF and brain MRI, which emphasizes the importance of clinical symptoms and autoantibody testing in diagnostic workflow for early introduction of immunotherapy, which can lead to favorable outcome in AE patients.


Author(s):  
Petr Ilyin

Especially dangerous infections (EDIs) belong to the conditionally labelled group of infectious diseases that pose an exceptional epidemic threat. They are highly contagious, rapidly spreading and capable of affecting wide sections of the population in the shortest possible time, they are characterized by the severity of clinical symptoms and high mortality rates. At the present stage, the term "especially dangerous infections" is used only in the territory of the countries of the former USSR, all over the world this concept is defined as "infectious diseases that pose an extreme threat to public health on an international scale." Over the entire history of human development, more people have died as a result of epidemics and pandemics than in all wars combined. The list of especially dangerous infections and measures to prevent their spread were fixed in the International Health Regulations (IHR), adopted at the 22nd session of the WHO's World Health Assembly on July 26, 1969. In 1970, at the 23rd session of the WHO's Assembly, typhus and relapsing fever were excluded from the list of quarantine infections. As amended in 1981, the list included only three diseases represented by plague, cholera and anthrax. However, now annual additions of new infections endemic to different parts of the earth to this list take place. To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already included more than 100 diseases in the list of especially dangerous infections.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinyao Ni ◽  
Junwu Zhang ◽  
Yanxia Chen ◽  
Weizhong Wang ◽  
Jinlin Liu

Abstract Background Good's syndrome (GS) is a rare secondary immunodeficiency disease presenting as thymoma and hypogammaglobulinemia. Due to its rarity, the diagnosis of GS is often missed. Methods We used the hospital information system to retrospectively screen thymoma and hypogammaglobulinemia patients at the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University from Apr 2012 to Apr 2020. The clinical, laboratory, treatment, and outcome data for these patients were collected and analyzed. Results Among the 181 screened thymoma patients, 5 thymoma patients with hypogammaglobulinemia were identified; 3 patients had confirmed diagnoses of GS, and the other 2 did not have a diagnosis of GS recorded in the hospital information system. A retrospective review of the clinical characteristics, laboratory results, and follow-up data for these 2 undiagnosed patients confirmed the diagnosis of GS. All 5 GS patients presented with pneumonia, 2 patients presented with recurrent skin abscesses, 2 patients presented with recurrent cough and expectoration, 1 patient presented with recurrent oral lichen planus and diarrhea, and 1 patient presented with tuberculosis and granulomatous epididymitis. In the years after the diagnosis of hypogammaglobulinemia with mild symptoms, all 5 patients had received irregular intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment. As the course of the disease progressed, the clinical symptoms of all patients worsened, but the symptoms were partly resolved with IVIG in these patients. However, 4 patients died due to comorbidities. Conclusion GS should be investigated as a possible diagnosis in thymoma patients who present with hypogammaglobulinemia, especially those with recurrent opportunistic infections, recurrent skin abscesses, chronic diarrhea, or recurrent lichen planus.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Xuan Zhu ◽  
Xinxin Zhu ◽  
Min Wang ◽  
Fang Yang ◽  
Zhibing Sun ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics and outcomes of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) long-term nucleic acid positive patients (hereinafter referred to as CLTAPs). METHODS: Patients were recruited from the Xiaogan Central Hospital between 16 January 2020 and 28 March 2020. Among the 562 cases of patients with laboratory-identified COVID-19 infection by real-time polymerase chain reaction (qtPCR), 19 cases of COVID-19 patients with more than 41 days from the first to the last time of nucleic acid test were selected as the study group, and 76 cases of age- and gender-matched COVID-19 patients were selected as the control group (hereinafter referred to as C-CLTAPs). Demographic characteristics, clinical symptoms, laboratory examination and computed tomography (CT) imaging characteristics were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: On admission, among the 562 cases of patients with COVID-19, there were 398 cases of ordinary COVID-19 patients, 99 cases of severe COVID-19 patients and 99 cases of critical COVID-19 patients. CLTAPs had milder clinical symptoms and longer viral shedding time in comparison to C-CLTAPs. Compared to C-CLTAPs, CLTAPs had a lower infection index at admission. CLTAPs used less oxygen therapy and a higher proportion of hydroxychloroquine treatment in comparison to C-CLTAPs. In comparison to C-CLTAPs, CLTAPs showed slower pulmonary CT progression and faster pulmonary CT absorption. CONCLUSION: In this study, out of the 562 cases, we found 19 CLTAPs. The clinical differences between CLTAPs and C-CLTAPs were compared and analyzed. We hope that these finding can provide a theoretical basis for the treatment of CLTAPs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 1210.2-1210
Author(s):  
S. Zheng ◽  
P. Y. Lee ◽  
Y. Huang ◽  
Q. Huang ◽  
S. Chen ◽  
...  

Background:The incidence of juvenile gout is increasing in China. The clinical manifestations of juvenile gout and treatment strategies to reduce uric acid levels in children are not well described due to the limited number of cases in the past.Objectives:We aim to describe the clinical characteristic of children with gout and study the treatment response to febuxostat.Methods:These studies were approved by the Institutional Review Board of Guangdong Second provincial General Hospital. We performed a retrospective analysis on 98 juvenile gout patients (age ≤ 18 years) evaluated in our hospital from Jan 2016 to Dec 2019. We analyzed clinical parameters, laboratory data and treatment response.Results:The average age of disease onset in children with gout was 15.2 ± 2.0 years and the youngest patient was 9 years old. The majority of patients were male (94/98) and mean serum uric acid (sUA) level were 705.8 ± 145.7 μmol/L (reference range <420 μmol/L). More than half of the cohort had normal body mass index (mean 24.7 ± 4.7 kg/m2; range 14.9 to 36.1 kg/m2). Renal function was generally normal in these children (serum creatinine 96.9 ± 17.8 μmol/L). In terms of joint manifestations, juvenile gout preferentially affected finger joints (29%), ankles (28%) and metatarsal joints (MTP; 20%). The most frequent sites of initial gout attack were ankles (45%), MTP (39%) and fingers (6%). In addition, tophi can occur in pediatric patients and typically develop in the finger joints (54%). Tophi was observed in about 25% of juvenile gout patients, typically within the first two years of disease onset (mean duration 1.7 ± 0. 9 years). We have found tophi in children as young as 10 years of age.For treatment for chronic hyperuricemia, 32 patients (32.7%) were started on febuxostat and 5 patients (5.1%) received allopurinol. A decrease in sUA was observed in both groups after the first month of treatment (febuxostat: baseline 690.4 ± 99.7 μmol/L to 482.7 ± 140.8 μmol/L vs. allopurinol: baseline 728.8 ±112.8 μmol/L to 565.0 ± 116.7 μmol/L, P=0.477). Serum uric acid of 6 patients in the febuxostat group (none in the allopurinol group) dropped below 360 μmol/L. There were no statistical differences in Cr, AST and ALT between the groups. During follow-up after 3 months, further decline in sUA level were observed in patients treated with febuxostat (409.5 ± 83.4, compared with baseline P<0.001).Conclusion:Juvenile gout has a different pattern of joint involvement and is less associated with elevated BMI compared to gout in adults. We show that febuxostat is effective in reducing uric acid levels in juvenile gout. These findings will help clinicians better understand the clinical manifestations and treatment response in juvenile gout.Figure 1Compared treatment response with allopurinol and febuxostatReferences:[1]Kishimoto K, Kobayashi R, Hori D, et al. Febuxostat as a Prophylaxis for Tumor Lysis Syndrome in Children with Hematological Malignancies. Anticancer Res. 2017 Oct;37(10):5845-5849.[2]Lu, C.C., et al. Clinical characteristics of and relationship between metabolic components and renal function among patients with early-onset juvenile tophaceous gout. J Rheumatol, 2014. 41(9): p. 1878-83.Disclosure of Interests:None declared


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Si ◽  
Mohamed Kazamel ◽  
Michael Benatar ◽  
Joanne Wuu ◽  
Yuri Kwon ◽  
...  

AbstractAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive muscle weakness. Skeletal muscle is a prime source for biomarker discovery since it is one of the earliest sites to manifest disease pathology. From a prior RNA sequencing project, we identified FGF23 as a potential muscle biomarker in ALS. Here, we validate this finding with a large collection of ALS muscle samples and found a 13-fold increase over normal controls. FGF23 was also increased in the SOD1G93A mouse, beginning at a very early stage and well before the onset of clinical symptoms. FGF23 levels progressively increased through end-stage in the mouse. Immunohistochemistry of ALS muscle showed prominent FGF23 immunoreactivity in the endomysial connective tissue and along the muscle membrane and was significantly higher around grouped atrophic fibers compared to non-atrophic fibers. ELISA of plasma samples from the SOD1G93A mouse showed an increase in FGF23 at end-stage whereas no increase was detected in a large cohort of ALS patients. In conclusion, FGF23 is a novel muscle biomarker in ALS and joins a molecular signature that emerges in very early preclinical stages. The early appearance of FGF23 and its progressive increase with disease progression offers a new direction for exploring the molecular basis and response to the underlying pathology of ALS.


Author(s):  
Yoshinori Taniguchi ◽  
Hirofumi Nishikawa ◽  
Takeshi Yoshida ◽  
Yoshio Terada ◽  
Kurisu Tada ◽  
...  

AbstractReactive arthritis (ReA) is a form of sterile arthritis that occurs secondary to an extra-articular infection in genetically predisposed individuals. The extra-articular infection is typically an infection of the gastrointestinal tract or genitourinary tract. Infection-related arthritis is a sterile arthritis associated with streptococcal tonsillitis, extra-articular tuberculosis, or intravesical instillation of bacillus Calmette–Guérin (iBCG) therapy for bladder cancer. These infection-related arthritis diagnoses are often grouped with ReA based on the pathogenic mechanism. However, the unique characteristics of these entities may be masked by a group classification. Therefore, we reviewed the clinical characteristics of classic ReA, poststreptococcal ReA, Poncet’s disease, and iBCG-induced ReA. Considering the diversity in triggering microbes, infection sites, and frequency of HLA-B27, these are different disorders. However, the clinical symptoms and intracellular parasitism pathogenic mechanism among classic ReA and infection-related arthritis entities are similar. Therefore, poststreptococcal ReA, Poncet’s disease, and iBCG-induced ReA could be included in the expanding spectrum of ReA, especially based on the pathogenic mechanism.


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