Prolonged SARS-CoV-2 Viral Shedding in Patients with COVID-19 was Associated with Delayed Initiation of Arbidol Treatment and Consulting Doctor Later: A Retrospective Cohort Study

  1. Xin-liang He
  2. Ya-ya Zhou
  3. Wei Fu
  4. Yu-e Xue
  5. Meng-yuan Liang
  6. Bo-han Yang
  7. Wan-li Ma
  8. Qiong Zhou
  9. Long Chen
  10. Jian-chu Zhang
  11. Xiao-rong Wang

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1007/s11596-021-2434-y
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.09.20076646: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical Approval: Ethical approval was waived by the institutional review board of Wuhan Union Hospital since we collected and analyzed all data from the patients according to the policy for public health outbreak investigation of emerging infectious diseases issued by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The statistical analyses and graphics were performed with IBM SPSS 22.0 (SPSS Inc, Armonk, NY) and R 3.6.0 (The R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Some limitations of this study should also be acknowledged. First, the retrospective single-center design leads to missing data and unavoidable biases and the sample size was relatively small. Second, owing to the small number of patients who initiated arbidol treatment 2–3 days of illness onset, we were not able to assess the effect of earlier initiation of arbidol treatment. Despite these limitations, the study was designed to reflect the ‘real life’ clinical situation. Clinical information was meticulously gathered using standard protocols by admitted medical team. This has important implications for both patient isolation decision making and guidance around the length of antiviral treatment and the choice of antivirals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first retrospective cohort study among patients with COVID-19 to assess the risk factors of prolonged virus shedding and the effects of arbidol on SARS-CoV-2 shedding. We found that initiation of arbidol within seven days after illness onset as well as arbidol combination with and interferon were helpful for clearance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Additionally, prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA shedding was independently associated with delayed medical visitation and correlated with the illness onset day (before or after 31, Jan). These results reinforce consulting a doctor and receiving treatments as soon as possible after illness onset helps to SARS-CoV-2 clearance in patients with COVID-19.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.09.20076646v1 on medRxiv