The symptoms of COVID-19 have been known from the first weeks of the pandemic, but determining the order in which the symptoms appear can be of great help to patients, who can immediately decide to isolate themselves or seek care. sanitary.
Researchers at the University of South Carolina (USC) have determined what appears to be the most likely order in which COVID-19 symptoms first appear: fever, cough and muscle pain, nausea and / or vomiting, and diarrhea. .
These findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health , and they could also help doctors rule out other diseases or plan how to treat patients.
Fever and cough are frequently associated with a variety of respiratory illnesses, including Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). But timing and symptoms in the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract set COVID-19 apart from other diseases. “The upper gastrointestinal tract (ie nausea / vomiting) appears to be affected earlier than the lower gastrointestinal tract (ie diarrhea) in COVID-19, which is the opposite of MERS and SARS,” the scientists wrote in the article. .
Joseph Larsen, lead author of the study and professor at USC adds: “Since there are now better approaches to treatments for COVID-19, identifying patients earlier could reduce hospitalization time .”
Method
The authors predicted the order of symptoms this spring from the symptom incidence rates of more than 55,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in China, all of which were collected from February 16-24 by the World Health Organization. They also studied a dataset of nearly 1,100 cases collected between December 11 and January 29 by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group through the China National Health Commission.
To compare the order of COVID-19 symptoms with those of influenza, the researchers examined data from 2,470 cases in North America, Europe, and the southern hemisphere that were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.
Knowing that each disease progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner if someone is likely to have COVID-19 or another illness, which can help them make better decisions about treatment.
