Clinical features and the traditional Chinese medicine therapeutic characteristics of 293 COVID-19 inpatient cases

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is now pandemic worldwide and has heavily overloaded hospitals in Wuhan City, China during the time between late January and February. We reported the clinical features and therapeutic characteristics of moderate COVID-19 cases in Wuhan that were treated via the integration of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine. We collected electronic medical record (EMR) data, which included the full clinical profiles of patients, from a designated TCM hospital in Wuhan. The structured data of symptoms and drugs from admission notes were obtained through an information extraction process. Other key clinical entities were also confirmed and normalized to obtain information on the diagnosis, clinical treatments, laboratory tests, and outcomes of the patients. A total of 293 COVID-19 inpatient cases, including 207 moderate and 86 (29.3%) severe cases, were included in our research. Among these cases, 238 were discharged, 31 were transferred, and 24 (all severe cases) died in the hospital. Our COVID-19 cases involved elderly patients with advanced ages (57 years on average) and high comorbidity rates (61%). Our results reconfirmed several well-recognized risk factors, such as age, gender (male), and comorbidities, as well as provided novel laboratory indications (e.g., cholesterol) and TCM-specific phenotype markers (e.g., dull tongue) that were relevant to COVID-19 infections and prognosis. In addition to antiviral/antibiotics and standard supportive therapies, TCM herbal prescriptions incorporating 290 distinct herbs were used in 273 (93%) cases. The cases that received TCM treatment had lower death rates than those that did not receive TCM treatment (17/273= 6.2% vs. 7/20= 35%, P = 0.0004 for all cases; 17/77= 22% vs. 7/9= 77.7%, P = 0.002 for severe cases). The TCM herbal prescriptions used for the treatment of COVID-19 infections mainly consisted of Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae, Radix Scutellariae, Rhizoma Pinellia, and their combinations, which reflected the practical TCM principles (e.g., clearing heat and dampening phlegm). Lastly, 59% of the patients received treatment, including antiviral, antibiotics, and Chinese patent medicine, before admission. This situation might have some effects on symptoms, such as fever and dry cough. By using EMR data, we described the clinical features and therapeutic characteristics of 293 COVID-19 cases treated via the integration of TCM herbal prescriptions and Western medicine. Clinical manifestations and treatments before admission and in the hospital were investigated. Our results preliminarily showed the potential effectiveness of TCM herbal prescriptions and their regularities in COVID-19 treatment.

Keywords

COVID-19 / traditional Chinese medicine / clinical features

1 Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, has now become pandemic worldwide with more than ten millions confirmed cases. Similar to those of the common cold and flu, the symptoms of COVID-19 are fever and cough. Most (over 80%) COVID-19 cases are moderate with good outcomes [1]. However, patients with critical cases of COVID-19 experience difficulty breathing. Cases with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and multiple organ failure tend to have high mortality rates [2–4] because of the lack of effective therapies with antiviral drugs that are exclusive for COVID-19. In China, in addition to supportive treatment with Western medicine (e.g., antivirals), patients with COVID-19 receive personalized herbal prescriptions that are derived from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This combined treatment approach has been applied in 80% of COVID-19 cases and contributed to the low mortality rate in most cities outside of Hubei Province in China [5].

Prior studies on the treatment of COVID-19 with a combination of TCM herbal prescriptions and Western medicine have mainly involved less than 100 confirmed cases [6,7]. Conducting similar research with a moderate scale of observed clinical data to obtain results with increased reliability is necessary. We collected 293 retrospective COVID-19 cases in the form of electronic medical records (EMRs) from the largest TCM hospital in Wuhan, Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The values in structured data fields (e.g., demographic information, diagnoses, clinical orders, and laboratory tests) in the EMRs were normalized. TCM clinical named entities, such as symptoms and patent medicines, were extracted from admission records and discharge records by using text mining methods. We developed an information extraction system for extracting the various expressions of phenotype terms in clinical text by using a framework of human–machine collaboration strategies. This approach assured the data quality of the final extracted named entities.

This retrospective observation study described the epidemiologic features, clinical manifestations, treatments, and outcomes of 293 COVID-19 cases treated with combined TCM and Western medicine therapies.

2 Materials and methods

2.1 Data collection

This single-center retrospective study was performed at Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The EMRs (e.g., epidemiological, symptoms, and diagnoses), laboratory test results, and radiology reports of all inpatients in the pulmonary disease department from January 15, 2020 to March 2, 2020 were collected. In accordance with the diagnostic criteria of the fifth edition of the COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment plan [8], 26 patients who were still hospitalized and 38 inpatients without CT radiology results for COVID-19 were excluded, leaving 293 inpatients in the final analysis (Fig. 1). Among the 293 cases, only 191 were positive for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid, and 102 cases lacked this information. However, suspected cases with the characteristic manifestations of COVID-19 (e.g., patchy ground-glass opacities, nodules, and patchy exudation) on CT scans were also treated as clinically confirmed cases even though their nucleic acid test results were negative (i.e., clinically diagnosed cases). As a result, 102 patients were also considered as positive cases. Under the guidance of clinical classification, these 293 patients were then divided into the moderate (including mild and moderate cases) and severe groups (including severe and critical cases) [9].

2.2 Information extraction of text records from EMR data

For investigating the trajectories of clinical manifestations and any prior treatments before admissions, we developed a clinical information extraction [10] tool to extract the various expressions of symptoms, mentions of drugs and therapies, and chronic diseases that were recorded in the medical histories of patients with COVID-19 from EMRs. Our information-extraction–annotation system used a framework based on the collaboration of dictionary-based annotation with manual verification strategies. This framework helped us fully extract the various expressions of phenotype terms in the clinical text and assure the data quality of the final extracted named entities. We typically extracted TCM clinical named entities, such as symptoms, drugs, and TCM patent medicines, within longitudinal events from admission records. Extraction would help us detect the longitudinal patterns of TCM symptoms and treatments for COVID-19.

2.3 Data normalization

Data standardization and normalization are required given that in EMRs, most data values are expressed in fine granularities to maintain an accurate profile of clinical entities. We normalized disease descriptions with the help of the International Classification of Disease Codes, Ninth Revision [11] and constrained symptom manifestations on the basis of the taxonomy of Symptom Ontology [12]. We finally identified 132 comorbid diseases with 13 systems and 99 symptoms in 8 symptom categories in this dataset. By using similar manual processing steps, we obtained 29 distinct terms of manifestations of the pulse and tongue, 12 terms of properties and flavors (e.g., bitter), 12 terms of channel tropism (e.g., stomach channel), and 254 terms of efficacy (e.g., antiviral) for TCM herbs and 35 drug categories of conventional therapies. All the admission data of the patients were verified and standardized by trained medical researchers to ensure highly accurate terminological mappings.

2.4 Statistical and data analysis

Descriptive and continuous variables were expressed as mean±SD or median (IQR) and subjected to Mann–Whitney U test. Categorical variables were expressed numerically as percentages and compared via χ² test or Fisher’s exact test between different groups. A two-sided α of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. All calculations and regression analysis were carried out by using SciPy and Statsmodels, which are a Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering. Given that multiple herbs are typically found in a TCM prescription, we used the association rule mining algorithm (i.e., Apriori) [13] to obtain high-frequency herb combinations from prescriptions. Furthermore, we applied complex network analysis [14,15] to investigate the core herb combinations that had high coverage in clinical prescriptions.

3 Results

3.1 Clinical features of 293 relevant inpatients with COVID-19

Among 293 cases, 191 were confirmed cases (65%) that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid and 102 were clinically diagnosed cases (35%) with confirmed positive chest CT reports. A total of 273 (93%) patients received integrated TCM and Western medicine therapies. In this study, 24 cases died during hospitalization, 238 cases were discharged, and 31 cases were transferred to other hospitals (e.g., Jinyintan Hospital). The average age of these patients was 57 years. Among the patients, 54% were female and 46% were male. Severe cases had longer average hospital stays (15.5 days vs. 14 days) and shorter symptom onset time (9 days vs. 11.5 days) than moderate cases. A total of 178 (61%) patients had disease comorbidities, particularly diseases of the metabolic and circulatory system. Hypertension was the most common comorbidity (24%), followed by diabetes (16%) and coronary heart disease (6%). Severe cases tended to have a higher degree of comorbidities than moderate cases. Approximately 83% of patients had manifestations of the respiratory tract. Coughing was the most prevalent symptom (51%), and nearly half of the cases suffered from digestive and neurological system discomfort, such as loss of appetite and insomnia. In addition, chest tightness, wheezing, and breathing difficulty might indicate severe conditions. Although their overall mean values were within the normal range, severe cases tended to have higher frequencies and values of breath and blood pressure than moderate cases. This observation was similar between the survivors and nonsurvivors (Tables 1 and 2). For TCM-specific manifestations, a high number of cases manifested yellow fur (57%) and reddish tongue (53%), and a higher number of patients with severe cases exhibited dull tongue and rapid pulse, which usually indicates the heat properties of the coronavirus from the pathological perspective of TCM. Similar results were also reflected in TCM syndromes, such as the syndrome of phlegm-heat lung obstruction.

Although most patients with COVID-19 had normal white blood cell and neutrophil counts at the beginning of the disease, they tended to have abnormal lymphocyte counts and elevated C-reactive protein and IL-6 levels, indicating the possibility of secondary infection. These parameters slightly returned to normal after treatment. In addition, myoglobin, bilirubin, and γ-GT levels were clearly higher in severe cases than in moderate cases. Notably, triglyceride and total cholesterol levels were higher in moderate cases than in severe cases (1.6 mmol/L vs. 1.4 mmol/L and 4.4 mmol/L vs. 3.8 mmol/L). The ratio of partial of oxygen saturation was significantly lower in severe cases than in moderate cases, implying an increased likelihood of developing ARDS and receiving mechanical ventilation (Table 3).

Next, we fitted clinical outcomes through multivariate logistic regression (discharged= 0, transferred= 2, and died= 4) by using demographic features; clinical classification; and the clinical manifestations of symptoms, comorbidities, and TCM syndromes with>10 frequency. We found that the fitted model could explain 51.7% of variance of the clinical outcomes. Several significant associations were detected (Table 4). The risk factors for death included advanced age (coefficient= 0.753, P = 0.002); gender (female= 1, male= 2; coefficient= 0.173, P = 0.042); severe disease condition (coefficient= 0.856, P<0.0001); and clinical manifestations, including coughing up of phlegm (coefficient= 0.329, P = 0.006) and cerebral infarction (coefficient= 0.758, P = 0.001). We also found that patients with fatigue (coefficient= -0.23, P = 0.01) and yellow fur (coefficient= -0.31, P = 0.042) were more likely to be discharged than to be deceased.

3.2 Therapeutic characteristics of Western medicine and TCM patent prescriptions

Western medicine with antibacterial and antiviral agents remained the first choices for the treatment of the 293 inpatient cases (Tables 5 and 6). Specifically, 258 (88%) patients received antibacterial agents, 247 (84%) patients received antiviral agents, and 135 (46%) patients received glucocorticoids. Arbidol was given to 199 (68%) patients, ribavirin to 56 (19%) patients, and interferon to 52 (18%) patients. Large amounts of hormones (e.g., methylprednisolone), digestive system drugs (e.g., omeprazole), and biological products (e.g., albumin) were used in severe cases. In particular, large amounts of antishock drugs were used in the rescue phase of critical cases. However, except for a typical antiviral drug (i.e., arbidol), most other drugs were used for severe cases instead of for moderate cases. The use of some drugs, such as imipenem and cilastatin sodium, significantly differed between the two groups.

3.3 Therapeutic characteristics of TCM herbal prescriptions

A total of 20 (6.8%) patients did not receive Chinese herbal medicine, among whom 2 were in critical condition and not allowed to receive TCM therapy. EMR notes indicated that the remaining 18 cases (11 moderate and 7 severe) refused to take Chinese herbal medicine. The hospital stays of these 18 patients ranged from 5 days to 28 days. A total of 273 (93%) patients received 1176 herbal prescriptions (Table 7). Each prescription was prepared as a compound therapy that consisted of 16–18 herbs (Fig. 2A). A total of 256 (>95%) of the 269 survivors who were discharged or transferred received herbal prescriptions, whereas only 17 (71%) of the 24 deceased received herbal prescriptions instead (Table 7).

In the TCM clinical setting of COVID-19, personalized herbal prescriptions remained regular therapeutic solutions for treatment. From our data, we found that 290 distinct herbs were used for COVID-19 treatment. Most of the herbs in these prescriptions had pharmacological effects (from TCM pharmacological perspectives) of clearing heat and detoxifying (e.g., Radix Scutellariae and Pericarpium Trichosanthis) and dampening phlegm (e.g., Rhizoma Pinellia and Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae). These herbs had bitter or sweet properties and flavors. Despite the concept of holism that permeates all fields of TCM, including physiology, pathology, diagnosis, syndrome differentiation, and treatment, these therapies emphasized the upper energizer (heart and lung channel) and middle energizer (stomach and spleen channel) (Fig. 2B). Here, we showed and compared the partial results of herbal therapies between moderate and severe cases (Tables 8 and 9).

Furthermore, we presented the top 10 herb combinations (Table 10) among the 1176 herb prescriptions to detect combination regularities (e.g., the frequently used herb combinations in TCM compound therapies) for the treatment of COVID-19 disease. The results showed that herb pairs, such as Semen Trichosanthis and Poria, Pericarpium Trichosanthis and Rhizoma Pinellia, and Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae and Radix Glycyrrhizae, were frequently prescribed for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.

We modeled herb combinations as a network and applied complex network analysis to identify the core herb combinations from these prescriptions (Fig. 3). The outcome was consistent with the results from association rule mining. The core combinations were confirmed to have the pharmacological effects of detoxification, phlegm removal, and dampness drying in COVID-19 treatment.

3.4 Therapeutic characteristics of therapies before admission

We extracted the mentions of therapies in the text records of EMR admission notes to investigate the therapeutic profiles of patients with COVID-19 before admission. We identified 285 (97%) patients with discomfort and found that 172 (59%) patients were treated with drugs before admission (Table 11). Most of the patients received therapies with antibiotics (138) or antivirals (122). A total of 89 (30%) patients were treated with TCM patent medicine. Among these patients, 69 (78%) received Lianhuaqingwen capsule, which has a function of clearing heat and toxic materials. We observed that 83 symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, and fatigue) occurred before admission. Among the symptoms shown by the 94 pretreated patients, 51 had temporal outcomes (e.g., symptom disappearance) after preadmission treatment.

We found that the related symptoms relieved by the top 3 frequently used Western medical drugs before admission, namely, moxifloxacin (101 cases), oseltamivir (79 cases), and arbidol (61 cases), were fever (30%–40% partial relief rate (PRR)), fatigue and dry cough (20%–45% PRR), and cough (10%–20% PRR). However, these drugs rarely reduced the severity of chest tightness, palpitation, and wheezing. The related symptoms that could be relieved by the top Chinese patent medicine, Lianhuaqingwen capsule (69 cases), were fatigue (43% PRR), fever (38% PRR), dry cough (25% PRR), coughing (20% PRR), and wheezing (18% PRR) (Table 12).

4 Discussion

Fully elucidating the patterns of the epidemiological and clinical features of COVID-19 is necessary to control, prevent, and treat this disease. TCM practitioners mainly investigate the patterns of symptom phenotypes for disease diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, obtaining the detailed TCM descriptions of patients with COVID-19 in terms of symptoms and tongue and pulse manifestations will help elucidate the clinical groups of patients with COVID-19. In addition, given the absence of proven evidence for the effectiveness of antiviral and antibiotic drugs [16–19], TCM herb prescriptions are a feasible clinical choice for COVID-19 treatment especially because they have been successfully used to treat SARS, a coronavirus-induced disease that is similar to COVID-19 [20–24]. In this retrospective study, we reported the clinical features of COVID-19 from the perspectives of TCM and Western medicine and further investigated related clinical therapies. In contrast to the cases that were included in previous studies [25–27], the 293 COVID-19 cases included in our analysis originated solely from a TCM hospital in Wuhan, where patients tended to be in severe condition and were elderly (57 years old on average). The long symptom onset time (10 days on average) before admission resulted in the overloading of hospitals in Wuhan during late January and the entirety of February. A total of 61% of the patients had different types of comorbidities, and the comorbidity rate of the 207 moderate cases approached 52%. However, all the moderate cases were successfully treated, and most of these patients were discharged within 2 weeks. Among the remaining 86 severe cases, 40 were finally discharged successfully, and 24 died during treatment. The results showed that elderly male patients (73 years on average for death cases) with a high rate of disease comorbidity tended to have poor prognosis. The top frequently occurring symptoms were coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, fever, and insomnia. TCM-specific manifestations, such as yellow fur, might be a preventive TCM phenotype marker for good prognosis. Furthermore, most of the clinical findings from laboratory tests, such as white blood cell and lymphocyte counts, that were identified as risk factors for severe COVID-19 in our study were consistent with those reported in previous studies [28,29]. However, we found that triglycerides and total cholesterol were exceptions: the baseline levels of triglycerides and total cholesterol were higher in moderate cases than in severe cases but did not exceed their normal ranges. This result would be insightful for further biomedical investigations given that previous studies have shown that liver function and lipid levels are often related to viral infections in hepatitis B-related cirrhosis [30]. Cholesterol has critical functions in infection by several types of coronaviruses, such as type-I feline coronavirus [31,32].

Although regularly used drugs, such as methylprednisolone and moxifloxacin, have been widely applied to treat severe cases, reliable evidence for their effectiveness does not exist [16]. Therefore, screening potentially effective drugs for COVID-19 treatment is important. Among the 273 patients who used herbal prescriptions, 256 were discharged or transferred (i.e., 17/273= 6.2% death rate for all cases and 17/77= 22% death rate for severe cases). Among the remaining 20 patients who did not use herbal prescriptions, 13 survived (7/20= 35% death rate for all cases and 7/9= 77.7% death rate for severe cases). These results hinted at the potential effectiveness of herbal prescriptions. Therefore, these prescriptions should be further studied in well-designed clinical trials. Our data covered a period of 1.5 months commencing from mid-January, during which the national guideline for COVID-19 treatment was still being developed. Frontline TCM practitioners developed optimal personalized prescriptions for patients with COVID-19. As a result, nearly 300 distinct herbs were used at that time. The results showed that common herbs and their combinations were practically prescribed for COVID-19 treatment. These common herbs and their related combinations, such as Poria, Pericarpium Trichosanthis and Radix Scutellariae, Pericarpium Trichosanthis, and Radix Codonopsis and Fructus Forsythiae, have been included in the suggested prescriptions in the latest national guideline of COVID-19 [33]. The pharmacological effects of these herbs in removing phlegm, clearing heat, and arresting cough were useful in combating cough, fever, phlegm, and COVID-19-related complications. Moreover, the herbs, such as Radix Ophiopogonis, Poria, Rhizoma Pinellia, and Rhizoma Atractylodis Macrocephalae, possibly contributed to the good prognosis of severe cases. The underlying pharmacological mechanisms of these herbs and their related prescriptions for COVID-19 treatment have been active research topics in recent months [34]. We found that the three popularly used drugs, namely moxifloxacin, oseltamivir, and abidol, and one Chinese patent medicine (i.e., Lianhuaqingwen capsule) provided some degree of symptom (e.g., fever and dry cough) relief. However, these drugs rarely relieved most symptoms, such as chest tightness, palpitation, and wheezing, related to severe conditions. Western drugs were given to patients who stayed in-hospital, and 238 (81.2%) cases were finally discharged. The results indicated the effectiveness of TCM herbal prescriptions in the integrative treatment of COVID-19.

Our study has several limitations. First, given that the causative pathogen had just been identified at the time of admission, the diagnoses of most of the 293 patients were confirmed to be positive on the basis of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid. However, 102 cases still lacked viral RNA detective data. Second, this study involved a modest set of cases of hospitalized patients. Therefore, the laboratory test results, especially the multiple test comparisons, statistical test results, and P values obtained in this work, should be interpreted with caution because of the limited number of cases. Third, 31 patients were transferred to designated hospitals for mixed reasons, including management reasons in the early days of the pandemic and condition aggravation. Therefore, assessing the prognoses of these cases is difficult. Finally, this study mainly focused on the clinical features of the real-world manifestations and therapeutic characteristics of the integrated treatment of 293 COVID-19 cases in a clinical environment in Wuhan, China. Carefully designed clinical trials are required to filter out potential confounders to validate the correlations between the clinical features and prognosis of COVID-19 that may have clinical implications. Furthermore, due to complicated interactions among clinical features (e.g., symptoms and comorbidities) [35,36] and associations between phenotypes and genotypes, the exploration of the correlations between clinical phenotype networks and prognosis by COVID-19 clinical management is promising [37–39] to identify the precise patient subgroups [40,41] with possibly high mortality or good prognosis.

5 Conclusions

We described the clinical features and therapeutic characteristics of 293 COVID-19 inpatient cases in Wuhan. These cases were treated via the integration of TCM herbal prescriptions and Western medicine. Our results reconfirmed several well-recognized risk factors, such as age, gender (male), and comorbidities, and provided novel laboratory indications (e.g., cholesterol) and TCM-specific phenotype markers (e.g., dull tongue) that were relevant to COVID-19 infections and prognosis. Furthermore, we proposed a TCM symptom profile on the basis of nearly 300 COVID-19 cases. This profile would provide some important insights into TCM pathological studies. We identified frequently used herbs and their combinations from 1176 TCM prescriptions, which reflected the treatment principles of TCM for COVID-19 infections. Lastly, we found that 59% of patients received some form of treatment, including antivirals, antibiotics, and Chinese patent medicine, before admission. These might have some effects on COVID-19 symptoms, such as fever and dry cough.

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