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Background and aims The main goal of the present study is to investigate the incidence of Rotavirus co-infection in COVID-19 patients. Methods and Results Fecal samples of COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal symptoms which had positive PCR-were collected from Abadan's hospital, Iran during the period December 2020 to January 2021. Samples were analyzed by RT-PCR to determine the presence of Rotavirus. Finally, the total samples size of 37 were included in this study. The mean age of patients was 48.22 years. Abdominal pain alone was detected in 48.65% of the patients. At least one gastrointestinal symptom was detected in all of the patients. Diarrhea and fever were seen in 13.51% and 59.46% of patients, respectively. Nausea and vomiting were seen in 5.41% of the patients. RT-PCR showed no infection of Rotavirus among the patients. Conclusion Gastrointestinal symptoms related to COVID-19 are common. More studies is need among these patients groups for investigate coinfection with other fecal viral shedding carries, due to a worse prognosis and its association with disease severity. © 2023 Kamuzu University of Health Sciences and the Medical Association of Malawi.
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Background: The etiological agent of coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Conventional molecular methods are used to detect viruses in COVID-19 infected patients. This study aimed to investigate escape mutations from molecular detection on SARS-CoV-2 targeted genes, which indicates the importance of mutations in false-negative PCR test results in the detection of virus in clinical specimens of patients with COVID-19. Materials and Methods: The 20 nasopharyngeal swabs samples collected from COVID-19 confirmed patients. The SARS-CoV-2 E, nsp12, and N genetic regions are amplified by RT-PCR assay. PCR products were sequenced using the Sanger sequencing method and Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) to assess the polymorphism and mutations performed using MEGA X software and the Maximum likelihood method for the phylogenetic evaluation. Results: Among all COVID-19 cases, 60% and 40% were male and female, respectively. The MSA showed high conservation between all evaluated samples and VOCs in all N, E, and nsp12 genes. Also, the phylogenetic evaluation by the Maximum likelihood method reported high similarity between all SARS-CoV-2 sequenced samples, VOCs, and Wuhan reference sequences in the evaluated region. Conclusion: Our study results approved the relatively conserved suitability of the E, N, and RdRp-gene regions with no diversity, therefore, making them perfect candidates for first-line screening.
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Introduction: Since the start of a pandemic from Wuhan, China in 2019, there is tremendous attention on the COVID-19 manifestation. One of the most important COVID-19 clinical presentations is gastrointestinal symptoms. The current systematic review study aims to focus on the implication of the gastrointestinal tract in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Methods: We searched literature in MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase to find related article by using the following keywords "COVID-19", "SARS-CoV-2 infection", "Gastrointestinal Tract", "digestive system". The heterogeneity of included studies was quantified with the I2 statistic. A random-effects model was used to estimate the pooled prevalence and a meta-regression method was utilized to investigate the factors affecting heterogeneity between studies. Results: Of 3028 retrieved documents, 111 studies with 21126 COVID-19 cases were included. The prevalence of any Gastrointestinal symptoms was 17.22% (14.48 to 20.13). The prevalence of diarrhea was 13.75% (12.07 to 15.44), anorexia 27.41% (21.53 to 33.29) and Nausea/vomiting 8.11% (6.87 to 9.35). Furthermore, the prevalence of other symptoms in current study was fever 76.70% (73.42 to 79.83), cough 58.07% (54.59 to 61.52) and dyspnea/shortness of breath 24.63% (20.06 to 29.48). According to meta-regression results, age (p: 0.027) and fever (p<0.001) had significant effect on prevalence of any Gastrointestinal symptoms. Conclusion: The anorexia, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting are the most common Gastrointestinal presentations. Copyright © 2021 Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
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Introduction: To date, little is known about the clinical features of pediatric COVID-19 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Objective: Herein, we aimed to describe the differences in demographic characteristics, laboratory findings, clinical presentations, and outcomes of Iranian pediatric COVID-19 patients admitted to ICU versus those in non-ICU settings. Methods: This multicenter investigation involved 15 general and pediatrics hospitals and included cases with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection based on positive real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) admitted to these centers between March and May 2020, during the initial peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Results: Overall, 166 patients were included, 61 (36.7%) of whom required ICU admission. The highest number of admitted cases to ICU were in the age group of 1–5 years old. Malignancy and heart diseases were the most frequent underlying conditions. Dyspnea was the major symptom for ICU-admitted patients. There were significant decreases in PH, HCO3 and base excess, as well as increases in creatinine, creatine phosphokinase (CPK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and potassium levels between ICU-admitted and non-ICU patients. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), shock, and acute cardiac injury were the most common features among ICU-admitted patients. The mortality rate in the ICU-admitted patients was substantially higher than non-ICU cases (45.9% vs. 1.9%, respectively;p<0.001). Conclusions: Underlying diseases were the major risk factors for the increased ICU admissions and mortality rates in pediatric COVID-19 patients. There were few paraclinical parameters that could differentiate between pediatrics in terms of prognosis and serious outcomes of COVID-19. Healthcare providers should consider children as a high-risk group, especially those with underlying medical conditions. © 2021 Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
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Novel coronavirus outbreak in December 2019 leads to current pandemic condition worldwide. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 known as the aetiologic agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The major characterisation of COVID-19 is to involve lung and induce pneumonia, multiorgan failure, hypoxia and deat h. This systematic literature review aimed to assess the clinical manifestation and laboratory and radiologic features in patients with COVID-19. A literature review of the indexed articles in the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and Embase was performed to evaluate pathophysiology of COVID-19. Between 77,406 assessed COVID-19 patients, the most reported background diseases were cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. After fever, cough was the second most common repeated clinical feature. Furthermore, the laboratory investigations reveal that the C-reactive protein (CRP) increasing is the most common frequent laboratory finding. Chest imaging assessment indicates that bilateral involvement of the lungs is more common than unilateral involvement. Despite the fact that some of the COVID-19-infected patients are asymptomatic, the majority of patients showed a broad range of manifestation. The clinical findings help in better understanding of COVID-19 pathogenesis and patient's management. The primary concept of understanding of COVID-19 pathophysiology is necessary for reach to target therapeutics approach. According to the results, further in vivo investigations on animal models could be recommended for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in future.