ABSTRACT
Common Human Coronaviruses (HCoVs) (NL63, HKU1, 229E, and OC43) circulate worldwide and cause respiratory tract infections. Epidemiologic study of HCoVs paramount importance since the disease burden and its trajectory in years has not been well addressed in adults. Here, we aimed to describe the burden of HCoVs in a hospital setting over five years before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a retrospective study among patients (>18 years) between Jan 1, 2015, and Jan 1, 2020, whose respiratory specimens were tested by multiplex RT-PCR. In total, 7861 respiratory samples (4540 patients) were included; 38% tested positive for any respiratory viruses. Of these, 212 (12.2%) samples were positive for HCoVs, and their co-infection with other respiratory viruses was 30.6%. Rhinovirus (RV) (27.6%) was the most common co-infection for all three HCoVs. The overall prevalence of HCoVs tended to be the highest in the winter (40.9%). Patients aged ≥60 years had the highest prevalence of overall HCoVs (39.7%). Given the duration and the large sample size, this study from Turkey is one of the largest to date among adults in the literature. These epidemiological data and molecular surveillance HCoVs have important implications for the control and prevention of respiratory infection.
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to pose a threat to public health with the potential for the emergence of new variants. Vaccines are the milestones to control and slow down the damage of the pandemic. As of January 2021, a two-dose regimen with CoronaVac was authorized in Turkey. Due to the waning seroprevalence rate of SARS-CoV-2 over time, BNT162b2 or CoronaVac has been administered as the third dose following a two-dose CoronaVac regimen as a national vaccination policy. As of 14 January 2021, 5243 volunteers who received two doses of the CoronaVac vaccine at Hacettepe University Adult Vaccine Center were followed prospectively. In our study, relative vaccine effectiveness (VEff) for the third dose of the CoronaVac was 58.24% and 87.27% for BNT162b2 in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 cases. There were no hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions, or deaths in third-dose booster groups with either BNT162b2 or CoronaVac, yielding 100% effectiveness. Both homologous or heterologous third-dose boosters provided further protection against severe COVID-19 and should be prioritized as an effective strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
The disease course of children with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) seems milder as compared with adults, however, actual reason of the pathogenesis still remains unclear. There is a growing interest on possible relationship between pathogenicity or disease severity and biomarkers including cytokines or chemokines. We wondered whether these biomarkers could be used for the prediction of the prognosis of COVID-19 and improving our understanding on the variations between pediatric and adult cases with COVID-19. The acute phase serum levels of 25 cytokines and chemokines in the serum samples from 60 COVID-19 pediatric (n = 30) and adult cases (n = 30) including 20 severe or critically ill, 25 moderate and 15 mild patients and 30 healthy pediatric (n = 15) and adult (n = 15) volunteers were measured using commercially available fluorescent bead immunoassay and analyzed in combination with clinical data. Interferon gamma-induced protein 10 (IP-10) and macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-3ß levels were significantly higher in patient cohort including pediatric and adult cases with COVID-19 when compared with all healthy volunteers (p ≤ .001 in each) and whereas IP-10 levels were significantly higher in both pediatric and adult cases with severe disease course, MIP-3ß were significantly lower in healthy controls. Additionally, IP-10 is an independent predictor for disease severity, particularly in children and interleukin-6 seems a relatively good predictor for disease severity in adults. IP-10 and MIP-3ß seem good research candidates to understand severity of COVID-19 in both pediatric and adult population and to investigate possible pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19.