Is Higher Viral Load in SARS-CoV-2 Associated with Death?

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Abstract

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.04.20164061: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    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:
    The results of this study must be interpreted considering the methodological limitations. We focused on virologic aspects and did not include the effects of comorbidities, clinical symptoms, date of admission, date of sample collection, use of antivirals and antibiotics because of the heterogenous nature of the hospitalized patients and requirement of a large cohort for subgroup analysis. The duration of symptoms before testing may be an important variable, therefore, date of symptom onset is not consistently reported by medical assistants collecting samples at health services but other studies demonstrated that patients with other acute viral infections tend to present to hospital after expected peak viral load [18]. In conclusion, we found that admission SARS-CoV-2 viral load, as was determined by the Ct value, is an important surrogate epidemiological marker of infectivity that was independently associated with mortality among the patients hospitalized with COVID-19. These findings suggest that Ct values can be used to assist clinicians to identify patients at a high risk for severe outcome.

    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.