Symptoms associated with nucleic acid turning-negative-time in COVID-19 patients?

Abstract

Objective: To explore on the association between nucleic acid turning-negative-time and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) symptoms in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients with the Omicron variant.

Method: For this retrospective cross-sectional study, we enrolled 189 patients with COVID-19 (age 20-90 years) were included. multiple linear regression models were used to investigate the TCM symptoms affecting the nucleic acid turning-negative-time of COVID-19 patients, during the process of data analysis, taking with nucleic acid turning-negative-time as the dependent variable, and TCM symptoms as independent variables, and at the same time, sex, age, hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease were as confounding variables.

Results: The study found that the most common TCM symptoms of COVID-19 patients with Omicron were cough, dry throat, expectoration, fever, sore throat, pharyngeal itching, running nose, and nasal congestion. Regression analysis showed that the fit regressive equation showed a significant difference (F = 4.286, P < 0.001), R = 0.400, the adjusted R 2 = 0.123, and three variables in the regression equation showed significant difference (P < 0. 05). The results showed that nucleic acid turning-negative-time was mostly related to constipation, fever, and expectoration. If the patients had the symptoms of constipation, fever, and expectoration; that is, if patients showed these symptoms, the turning-negative-time of nucleic acid in patients with Omicron will be prolonged.

Conclusions: Treatment based on symptoms for patients with constipation, fever, and expectoration may have important clinical significance for the COVID-19 patients with Omicron.

Keywords

COVID-19 / Omicron / TCM symptoms / nucleic acid turning-negative-time

Author contributions

Mingchi Luo assessed and verified the data. Qiang Li contributed to the study design. Qiang Li and Lei Zhang contributed to statistical analysis. Limin Feng, Hongyuan Sun, Xiaoya Liu, Cunzhong Shi, and Yan Ma were involved in the acquisition of data. All authors were involved in interpretation of data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by National key research and development programs, including: The Key Project of Traditional Chinese Medicine Modernization Research (2018YFC1707503), National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Fund (82004505) and National Science and technology emergency research project (2020YFC0841600), and the COVID-19 Research Project of the First Affiliated Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (2020001).

Availability of data and materials

All data analyzed during this study are included in the article.

Ethical approval of studies and informed consent

This study was approved by the First Hospital Affiliated to Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Tianjin, China) (Approved No. TYLL2020[K]006).

Conflict of interest statement

None of the authors declare any conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Tianjin Haihe Hospital for providing the data for this work.

References

[1] Feng LM, Liu XY, Zhang L. Clinical observation of Xuanfei Baidu Granule in the treatment of COVID-19 (Omicron). Tianjin J Tradit Chin Med. 2022;39(5):545-550.

[2] Wang P, Guo CJ. COVID-19 super mutant: Omicron. Science.2022;74(1):26-31 + 4.

[3] Liu RY, Yu DH, Dang SJ. Treating corona virus disease 2019 from theory of “Lung and Large Intestine Being Interior-exteriorly Related”. J Chengdu Univ TCM. 2020;43(1):14-16 + 41.

[4] Jin YH, Cai L, Cheng ZS,. A rapid advice guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infected pneumonia (Full version). New Med. 2020;30(1):35-64.