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New Delhi: According to a new study, the sequence of symptoms experienced by COVID-19 patients may vary with the types of the virus, which explains how such changes can affect the spread of infection.
In Study published in the journal PLOS Computational BiologyIn this study, researchers from the University of Southern California in the US tried to find out whether the sequence of symptoms differed among patients from different geographic regions or with different patient characteristics.
The team previously developed a mathematical model predicting the sequence of COVID-19 symptoms based on data from the initial outbreak in China in early 2020.
In the new study, they used their modeling approach to predict symptom sequence in a set of 373,883 cases in the US between January and May 2020.
They found that the most likely symptom sequence differed between the initial outbreak in China – where fever was most often preceded by cough, and nausea was a common third symptom – and spread to the US.
In the US, cough was likely to be the first symptom, and diarrhea was a more common third symptom.
sequence of traits associated with the variant
By analyzing additional data from Brazil, Hong Kong and Japan, the team found that different sequences of symptoms were associated with SARS-CoV-2 variants, not geographic region, season or patient characteristics.
The presence of the D614G mutation – one of the earliest identified spike protein mutations of SARS-CoV-2 – was associated with a higher likelihood of coughing as the first COVID-19 symptom experienced by patients.
As Japan shifted from the original Wuhan reference strain to the D614G variant, the symptom sequence shifted as well. The team hypothesized that the increased transmission of D614G may be linked to the trait sequence.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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