ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
Neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) are commonly used to treat influenza and are also considered the potential treatment for COVID-19. The association of using NAIs during pregnancy with the risk of adverse birth defects has been investigated repeatedly by epidemiological studies;however, results are largely inconsistent. We herein performed this meta-analysis to investigate the true association of NAIs with adverse birth defects, including preterm birth (PTB), low birth weight (LBW), and small for gestational age (SGA). A systematic search was performed through PubMed, Scopus, and Embase to indentify all pertinent studies;The ORs with their corresponding 95% CIs were extracted or calculated. Heterogeneity was assessed using the Cochran Q test and the I2 statistic. A random-effect model was used for this meta-analysis due to existing heterogeneity. Overall, eight studies were included in our analysis, meta-analysis using a random-effect model showed that NAIs during pregnancy reduced the risk of LBW (OR=0.78, 95% CI=0.66–0.91) and SGA (OR=0.76, 95% CI=0.67– 0.86) but is not associated with PTB (OR=1.01, 95% CI=0.87–1.16). Results of the present study suggested that NAIs during pregnancy are safe and may reduce the risk of LBW and SGA. However, further studies from different ethnic populations are warranted to confirm our results. © 2021 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 raised the attention towards bacterial coinfection and its role in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease. This study aims to systematically review and identify the pooled prevalence of bacterial coinfection in the related articles. A comprehensive search was conducted in international databases, including MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase, to identify the articles on the prevalence of bacterial coinfections in COIVD-19 patients from 1 December 2019 until 30 December 2020. All observational epidemiological studies that evaluated the prevalence of bacterial coinfections in patients with COVID-19 were included without any restriction. Forty-two studies including a total sample size of 54,695 were included in the analysis. The pooled estimate for the prevalence of bacterial coinfections was 20.97% (95% CI: 15.95-26.46), and the pooled prevalence of bacterial coinfections was 5.20% (95% CI: 2.39-8.91) for respiratory subtype and 4.79% (95% CI: 0.11-14.61) for the gastrointestinal subtype. The pooled prevalence for Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office and South-East Asia Regional Office was 100% (95% CI: 82.35-100.00) and 2.61% (95% CI: 1.74-3.62). This rate of coinfection poses a great danger towards patients, especially those in critical condition. Although there are multiple complications and adverse effects related to extensive use of antibiotics to treat patients with COVID-19, it seems there is no other option except applying them, and it needs to be done carefully.