Have you ever wondered which symptom a coronavirus-infected patient presents first: coughing, fever, sneezing?
In a new study at the University of Southern California, researchers describe what order of symptoms is most likely for patients with Covid-19 experiment with the different variants of the virus. The results were published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.
Initially, the researchers used a mathematical model to map symptoms by region.
They identified an outbreak that occurred in China in early 2020 and compared the symptoms to a set of cases (over 373,000 infections) that occurred in the U.S between January and May 2020.
The team found that the order of first symptoms in China was based on fever followed by coughing and nausea, in addition to vomiting. In the US, cough was the first symptom, followed by diarrhea.
When they crossed the research with data from the Brazil, Hong Kong e Japan, scientists found that the order of symptoms was not related to region or climate, but to the type of SARS-CoV-2 virus that the person has acquired.
According to a press release released by the researchers, “these findings indicate that the order of symptoms may change with mutation in the viral disease and increase the possibility that the D614G variant is more transmissible because infected people are more likely to cough in public before they do. become incapacitated by fever,” they wrote.
The D614G strain circulated in Europe in the first wave of the pandemic of Covid-19. Experts believe, in fact, that the variant was the most infectious in the world in May 2020. The discovery could pave the way for future research on how patients are affected by the disease.
Reference: CNN Brasil
