Coronavirus has got six clusters with each having different signs and symptoms, UK based scientists revealed in a new study.
This research was published on Friday after researchers analyzed data collected by the COVID Symptom Study, a voluntary app used by 4 million people in the UK that allows people to log their symptoms of coronavirus.
Launched in March in the UK and extended to the US and Sweden, the COVID Symptom Study app asks participants to log in their health and any new potential symptoms of COVID-19 on a daily basis.
The researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to examine data from 1,653 users who tested positive for COVID-19.
Participants showed persistent symptoms and regularly logged updates on their health and situation using the app in March and April.
Overall, 383 of these users made at least one trip to the hospital, and 107 required either extra oxygen or ventilation.
Study of data from the app showed that some of the ‘types’ of COVID-19 were more prevalent than others and that certain types more strongly linked with the hospitalization of the patient.
The clusters include,
1. Flu-like with no fever Additional symptoms: Headache, muscle pains, loss of smell, sore throat, cough, chest pain, no fever.
2. Flu-like with fever Headache, loss of smell, sore throat, cough, hoarseness, loss of appetite, fever.
3. Gastrointestinal Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, sore throat, chest pain, no cough, diarrhoea.
4. Severe level one, fatigue Headache, loss of smell, cough, chest pain, fever, hoarseness, fatigue.
5. Severe level two, confusion Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, sore throat, chest pain, fever, hoarseness, fatigue, muscle pain, confusion.
6. Severe level three, abdominal and respiratory Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, sore throat, chest pain, fever, hoarseness, fatigue, muscle pain, confusion, diarrhoea, shortness of breath, abdominal pain.
The team said the first two clusters seem to be “milder” forms of Covid-19.
Next, the team investigated whether people experiencing particular symptom clusters were more likely to require breathing support in the form of ventilation or additional oxygen.
They discovered that only 1.5% of people with cluster 1, 4.4% of people with cluster 2 and 3.3% of people with cluster 3 COVID-19 required breathing support.
These figures were 8.6%, 9.9% and 19.8% for clusters 4,5 and 6 respectively. Furthermore, nearly half of the patients in cluster 6 ended up in the hospital, compared with just 16% of those in cluster 1.
Generally, people with cluster 4,5 or 6 COVID-19 symptoms tended to be older and frailer, and were more likely to be overweight and have pre-existing.
This was able to predict which cluster a patient falls into and their risk of requiring hospitalisation and breathing support with a higher likelihood of being correct than an existing risk model based purely on age, sex, BMI and pre-existing conditions alone.
Dr Claire Steves, a consultant geriatrician and a member of the team working on the study stated, “These findings have important implications for care and monitoring of people who are most vulnerable to severe COVID-19,”
“We saw that there was a very clear gradient between these clusters and outcomes in terms of participants’ need for respiratory support,” she added.
The researchers say tracking symptoms improves the ability to predict the trajectory of a Covid-19 patient.
The virus, which causes the respiratory infection Covid-19, was first detected in the city of Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
It then spread quickly across the globe in the first months of 2020, reaching 13 million confirmed cases in early July.
Governments across the world have been forced to limit the movement of the public and place health guidelines in a bid to slow the spread of the virus, which has had a devastating impact globally.
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