Fever, cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath, but also tingling, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, irritability, and confusion. These are some of the symptoms of infection with the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) identified in a review carried out by researchers from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) and CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research.
“Our goal was to describe the symptoms of patients with COVID-19 and the diseases associated with the infection by the new coronavirus,” explains Matilde Monteiro-Soares, who coordinated this study already published in MedRxiv.
The researchers analyzed studies that included thousands of COVID-19 patients registered on several continents, including Asia, America, and Europe. The patients were aged from 28 to 70 years.
Altogether, 30 symptoms were found to be associated with COVID-19. The most-reported symptom is fever, followed by cough, shortness of breath, and fatigue. Muscle pain and sore throat are also common as these were reported in up to 65% of the cases. Lack of appetite, chills, dizziness, sore throat, gastrointestinal symptoms (gastritis, abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting) and irritability are other symptoms described.
The Portuguese team also accounted for a total of 35 concomitant diseases. Cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and cerebrovascular disease are the most frequent. In the USA, the most commonly reported underlying comorbidity is chronic kidney disease, followed by heart failure, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and obstructive sleep apnea.
“We concluded that COVID-19 can affect people and take on very different clinical manifestations. Symptoms are, in general, nonspecific and very variable. We observed from asymptomatic cases to situations with several concomitant symptoms,” say the researchers from CINTESIS and FMUP.
According to the authors, the proportion of patients without symptoms varies from 25% to 75%. “This data reinforces the importance of testing and isolating people who may be infected, even if asymptomatic,” emphasize Matilde Monteiro-Soares, Daniela Ferreira-Santos, and Priscila Maranhão.
The identification of common characteristics, such as the sociodemographic profile, symptoms, and the presence of concomitant diseases, may now help to create a predictive model of the risk of having COVID-19, contributing to the definition of screening and therapeutic strategies in the near future.