Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis
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Italy is one of the most exposed countries worldwide to COVID-19, and Lombardy is the most affected region in Italy. In this context, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo in Pavia, one of the largest University hospitals in the region, has been involved in the management of the outbreak since its inception. Immediately after the communication of the first Italian COVID-19+ patient, the Pediatric Unit has been completely reorganized to face the approaching outbreak. The optimization of the Pediatric Unit resources for COVID-19 emergency is reported as an example to safely preserve health activity during the pandemic.
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Emerging and re-emerging viruses represent an important challenge for global public health. In the 1960s, coronaviruses (CoVs) were recognized as disease agents in humans. In only two decades, three strains of CoVs have crossed species barriers rapidly emerging as human pathogens resulting in life-threatening disease with a pandemic potential: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2002, Middle-East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012 and the recently emerged SARS-CoV-2. ⋯ Most of the documented infections belong to family clusters, so the importance of children in transmitting the virus remains uncertain. Like in SARS and MERS infection, there is the possibility that children are not an important reservoir for novel CoVs and this may have important implications for school attendance. While waiting for an effective against SARS-CoV-2, further prevalence studies in paediatric age are needed, in order to clarify the role of children in different age groups in the spread of the infection.
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COVID-19 first presented in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019. Since then, it has rapidly spread across the world, and is now formally considered a pandemic. As of 4th of May more than 3.2 million people have been infected and over 250,000 people has died. ⋯ To date, more than 9,000 academic papers have been published since December 2019. The quality of publications varies from a plane letter to editor to randomized studies. This review aims to analyse the current published literature related to COVID-19 and assess the quality of such articles.
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As the COVID 19 pandemic develops across the globe, a large amount of literature has been written about the different ways in which we can diagnose and investigate someone suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus. Many approaches highlight the importance of using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) used in conjunction with computed tomography (CT) scans. ⋯ Additionally, RT-PCR testing can have significant rates of false negatives, indicating the importance of taking a more comprehensive diagnostic approach. Here, we aim to review and analyse this literature to compare RT-PCR, serum inflammatory biomarkers, chest radiographs, ultrasound and chest CT scanning as methods of diagnosing COVID 19, particularly in asymptomatic patients.
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Observational Study
Routine blood analysis greatly reduces the false-negative rate of RT-PCR testing for Covid-19.
The COVID-19 outbreak is now a pandemic disease reaching as much as 210 countries worldwide with more than 2.5 million infected people and nearly 200.000 deaths. Amplification of viral RNA by RT-PCR represents the gold standard for confirmation of infection, yet it showed false-negative rates as large as 15-20% which may jeopardize the effect of the restrictive measures taken by governments. We previously showed that several hematological parameters were significantly different between COVID-19 positive and negative patients. Among them aspartate aminotransferase and lactate dehydrogenase had predictive values as large as 90%. Thus a combination of RT-PCR and blood tests could reduce the false-negative rate of the genetic test. ⋯ The study represents a preliminary work aiming at the development of strategies that, by combining RT-PCR tests with routine blood tests, will lower or even abolish the rate of RT-PCR false-negative results and thus will identify, with high accuracy, patients infected by COVID-19.