COVID‐19 Susceptibility in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

In the middle of December 2019, Chinese health authorities detected a series of pneumonia cases caused by an unknown agent in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. The causative agent was soon identified as a new strain of human-infecting coronavirus, 1 firstly named 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and later renamed as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The infection disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), varied from asymptomatic or common cold-like symptoms such as dry cough, fever and tiredness to severe dyspnoea and respiratory failure. 2 This initial outbreak alarmingly spread through China and other countries, and barely three months later, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. 3

COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test at hospital admission associated to the knowledge of individual risk factors allow overcoming the difficulty of managing suspected patients in hospitals COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test facilitates the management of suspected patients on hospital admission

“…Consistent with data from China, Italy, USA and others (21-23) previous stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were associated with poor in-hospital survival of COVID-19 positive individuals, together with age. Individuals with previous stroke history can develop severe infection and exhibited neurologic manifestations such as acute cerebrovascular diseases.…”

Why COVID-19 Transmission Is More Efficient and Aggressive Than Viral Transmission in Previous Coronavirus Epidemics?

“…Among different factors potentially affecting the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and changing the outcomes and mortality amongst COVID-19 patients are smoking and vaping [285,[290][291][292]. This is in line with the well-known general correlation between smoking and increased prevalence and mortality of infectious diseases [291], and with the fact that many COPD patients are smokers [285].…”

“…This is further complicated by the increased probability of the fluid and/or solid aspiration into the lungs, as well as age-associated inflammatory diseases, such as pulmonary fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) [284]. In fact, it was emphasized that both susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and severity of COVID-19 are systematically increased in the patients with COPD [285]. Alveolar epithelial cells (AETs) are responsible for the generation, secretion, and recycling of the lung mucosa or alveolar lining fluid (ALF), which is crucial for the correct lung maintenance [286].…”

“…Among different factors potentially affecting the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and changing the outcomes and mortality amongst COVID-19 patients are smoking and vaping [285,[290][291][292]. This is in line with the well-known general correlation between smoking and increased prevalence and mortality of infectious diseases [291], and with the fact that many COPD patients are smokers [285]. One should keep in mind, though, that existing data on the prevalence of smokers among COVID-19 patients and on the association between the COVID-19 outcomes and smoking are rather contradictory [290].…”

Automatic identification of risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 positivity and severe clinical outcomes of COVID-19 using Data Mining and Natural Language Processing

“…Some of the reported risk factors, such as age, (3,4) sex, (5,6) or obesity, (7)(8)(9)(10) are included in tabulated form in the electronic health records (EHRs). However, information on other relevant comorbidities such as diabetes, (11)(12)(13) cardiac (14)(15)(16) and pulmonary diseases, (17,18) cancer, (19) or dementia (20) is usually included as free-text in the medical history of the EHR and can be time consuming to retrieve. This holds in particular in patients with a long medical history and conditions that might not be included separately in the list of diagnoses (e.g.…”