ABSTRACT
Background The COVID-19 is the greatest catastrophe of the 21st century that ravaged health, economy, and everyday life. Over 90% of the infected individuals in Bangladesh took home treatments following various approaches and consuming different medications. The study aims to identify the recovery measures and the medications used by COVID-19 patients at home. Methods An online-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted between 5 October 2020 and 5 January 2021 among the COVID-19 patients who did not seek care from hospitals and recovered at home. Participants from all the administrative divisions of Bangladesh were recruited via social media. After obtaining consent, subjects were enrolled to complete the questionnaire that included questions on demographic characteristics, clinical itinerary, non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches. Results Of the 241 respondents, the majority were males (64.3%), aged 21-30 years (42.3%), and urban residents (65.6%). Fever (92.5%), cough (78.4%), and sore throat (62.7%) were the most common symptoms. Hypertension (17.3%), allergic rhinitis (15.3%), and asthma (15.3%) were the most prevalent pre-existing chronic conditions. Most of the respondents adopted some non-pharmacological approaches, such as inhaling steam/gargling warm water (75.1%), drinking any hot drink (85.9%), and consuming vegetables and fruits (67.6%) daily. Among the medicines consumed, paracetamol was the highest (97.1%), followed by antihistamines (77.6%) and antibiotics (61.4%) while corticosteroid, antiparasitic and antiviral drugs were less consumed drugs. Binary logistic regression found, living in the urban area, level of education and pre-existing diabetes were significant factors that impact recovery time from the COVID-19. Conclusions Most of the individuals experienced mild to moderate symptoms and used non-pharmacological approaches, while over-the-counter drugs were the most consumed medicines. Though these measures did not contribute significantly to recovery time, these can be used as a form of home management in the early stage to reduce the disease severity and may be effective for mild and moderate patients.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a rapidly emerging and highly transmissible disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Understanding the microbiomes associated with the upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and COVID-19 diseases has clinical interest. We hypothesized that the diversity of microbiome compositions and their genomic features are associated with different pathological conditions of these human respiratory tract diseases (COVID-19 and non-COVID; URTI and COPD). To test this hypothesis, we analyzed 21 whole metagenome sequences (WMS) including eleven COVID-19 (BD = 6 and China = 5), six COPD (UK = 6) and four URTI (USA = 4) samples to unravel the diversity of microbiomes, their genomic features and relevant metabolic functions. The WMS data mapped to 534 bacterial, 60 archaeal and 61 viral genomes with distinct variation in the microbiome composition across the samples (COVID-19>COPD>URTI). Notably, 94.57%, 80.0% and 24.59% bacterial, archaeal and viral genera shared between the COVID-19 and non-COVID samples, respectively, however, the COVID-19 related samples had sole association with 16 viral genera other than SARS-CoV-2. Strain-level virome profiling revealed 660 and 729 strains in COVID-19 and non-COVID sequence data, respectively and of them 34.50% strains shared between the conditions. Functional annotation of metagenomics sequences of thevCOVID-19 and non-COVID groups identified the association of several biochemical pathways related to basic metabolism (amino acid and energy), ABC transporters, membrane transport, replication and repair, clustering-based subsystems, virulence, disease and defense, adhesion, regulation of virulence, programmed cell death, and primary immunodeficiency. We also detected 30 functional gene groups/classes associated with resistance to antibiotics and toxic compounds (RATC) in both COVID-19 and non-COVID microbiomes. Furthermore, a predominant higher abundance of cobalt-zinc-cadmium resistance (CZCR) and multidrug resistance to efflux pumps (MREP) genes were detected in COVID-19 metagenome. The profiles of microbiome diversity and associated microbial genomic features found in both COVID-19 and non-COVID (COPD and URTI) samples might be helpful for developing the microbiome-based diagnostics and therapeutics for COVID-19 and non-COVID respiratory diseases. However, future studies might be carried out to explore the microbiome dynamics and the cross-talk between host and microbiomes employing larger volume of samples from different ethnic groups and geoclimatic conditions.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, fatality and cases of new infections are also increasing at an alarming rate. SARS-CoV-2 follows a highly variable course and it is becoming more evident that individuals immune system has a decisive influence on the progression of the disease. However, the detailed underlying molecular mechanisms of the SARS-CoV-2 mediate disease pathogenesis are largely unknown. Only a few host transcriptional responses in COVID-19 have been reported so far from the Western world, but no such data has been generated from the South-Asian region yet to correlate the conjectured lower fatality around this part of the globe. In this context, we aimed to perform the transcriptomic profiling of the COVID-19 patients from Bangladesh along with the reporting of the SARS-CoV-2 isolates from these patients. Moreover, we performed a comparative analysis to demonstrate how differently the various SARS-CoV-2 infection systems are responding to the viral pathogen. We detected a unique missense mutation at 10329 position of ORF1ab gene, annotated to 3C like proteinase, which is found in 75% of our analyzed isolates; but is very rare globally. Upon the functional enrichment analyses of differentially modulated genes, we detected a similar host induced response reported earlier; this response was mainly mediated by the innate immune system, interferon stimulation, and upregulated cytokine expression etc. in the Bangladeshi patients. Surprisingly, we did not perceive the induction of apoptotic signaling, phagosome formation, antigen presentation and production, hypoxia response within these nasopharyngeal samples. Furthermore, while comparing with the other SARS-CoV-2 infection systems, we spotted that lung cells trigger the more versatile immune and cytokine signaling which was several folds higher compared to our reported nasopharyngeal samples. We also observed that lung cells did not express ACE2 in a very high amount as suspected, however, the nasopharyngeal cells are found overexpressing ACE2. But the amount of DPP4 expression within the nasal samples was significantly lower compared to the other cell types. Surprisingly, we observed that lung cells express a very high amount of integrins compared to the nasopharyngeal samples, which might suggest the putative reasons for an increased amount of viral infections in the lungs. From the network analysis, we got clues on the probable viral modulation for the overexpression of these integrins. Our data will provide valuable insights in developing potential studies to elucidate the roles of ethnicity effect on the viral pathogenesis, and incorporation of further data will enrich the search of an effective therapeutics.