Clinical and Laboratory Profiles of 75 Hospitalized Patients with Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Hefei, China

  1. Zonghao Zhao
  2. Jiajia Xie
  3. Ming Yin
  4. Yun Yang
  5. Hongliang He
  6. Tengchuan Jin
  7. Wenting Li
  8. Xiaowu Zhu
  9. Jing Xu
  10. Changcheng Zhao
  11. Lei Li
  12. Yi Li
  13. Hylemariam Mihiretie Mengist
  14. Ayesha Zahid
  15. Ziqin Yao
  16. Chengchao Ding
  17. Yingjie Qi
  18. Yong Gao
  19. Xiaoling Ma

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection began in December 2019 in Wuhan, and rapidly spread to many provinces in China. The number of cases has increased markedly in Anhui, but information on the clinical characteristics of patients is limited. We reported 75 patients with COVID-19 in the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC from Jan 21 to Feb 16, 2020, Hefei, Anhui Province, China. COVID-19 infection was confirmed by real-time RT-PCR of respiratory nasopharyngeal swab samples. Epidemiological, clinical and laboratory data were collected and analyzed. Of the 75 patients with COVID-19, 61 (81.33%) had a direct or indirect exposure history to Wuhan. Common symptoms at onset included fever (66 [88.0%] of 75 patients) and dry cough (62 [82.67%]). Of the patients without fever, cough could be the only or primary symptom. The most prominent laboratory abnormalities were lymphopenia, decreased percentage of lymphocytes (LYM%), decreased CD4 + and CD8 + T cell counts, elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). Patients with elevated interleukin 6 (IL-6) showed significant decreases in the LYM%, CD4 + and CD8 + T cell counts. Besides, the percentage of neutrophils, CRP, LDH and Procalcitonin levels increased significantly. We concluded that COVID-19 could cause different degrees of hematological abnormalities and damage of internal organs. Hematological profiles including LYM, LDH, CRP and IL-6 could be indicators of diseases severity and evaluation of treatment effectiveness. Antiviral treatment requires a comprehensive and supportive approach. Further targeted therapy should be determined based on individual clinical manifestations and laboratory indicators.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.01.20029785: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC. Procedures: Respiratory nasopharyngeal swabs were collected and the presence of COVID-19 was detected by next real-time RT-PCR methods.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Graphpad prism 8.3 was used for all analyses.
    Graphpad
    suggested: (GraphPad, RRID:SCR_000306)

    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:
    This study has several limitations. First, only 75 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included. It would be better to include as many patients as possible to get a more comprehensive understanding of COVID-19. Second, more detailed patient information, particularly treatment strategies and clinical outcomes, was unavailable at the time of analysis. Regarding the inflammatory factors, we only measured IL-6 level changes. Future studies should focus on changes of various pro-inflammatory factors, ie IL-1, which may provide precise target treatment options for different patients. In conclusion, this study provides an early assessment of the clinical and laboratory profiles of COVID-19 patients in Hefei, China. The clinical manifestation of COVID-19 was nonspecific. Specific coronavirus antivirals show proven efficacies in humans are unavailable to date. Antiviral therapy requires a comprehensive and supportive treatment. Targeted therapy should also be determined based on individual clinical manifestations and laboratory indicators.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.01.20029785 on medRxiv