Clinical features of SARS-CoV-2 infection in older adults

ABSTRACT

Synopsis The heterogeneity of Covid-19 clinical presentation is extremely diversified, especially in older patients due to possible presence of atypical symptoms at disease onset, such as delirium, hyporexia and falls. Despite this findings, even in older people the typical clinical presentation with fever and respiratory symptoms remains the most probable. The clinical characteristic at Covid-19 onset are influenced by the presence of common health-related conditions in geriatric subjects, such as comorbidity, disability and frailty, and not simply by chronological age. Moreover, few studies investigated the tendency of Covid-19 symptoms to aggregate in cluster and the use of cluster approach might better describe the clinical complexity of the acute disease. Finally, concerning the prognostic significance of Covid-19 clinical presentation in older people, the available literature still provides discordant results: currently, patients with atypical symptoms report a higher risk to adverse outcomes, such as severity of acute illness and death.