Search

Objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to increased mortality rates. To assess this impact, this ecological study aimed to estimate the excess death counts in southern Iran., Methods: The study obtained weekly death counts by linking the National Death Registry and Medical Care Monitoring Center repositories. The P-score was initially estimated using a simple method that involved calculating the difference between the observed and expected death counts. The interrupted time series analysis was then used to calculate the mean relative risk (RR) of death during the first year of the pandemic., Results: Our study found that there were 5571 excess deaths from all causes (P-score=33.29%) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 48.03% of these deaths directly related to COVID-19. The pandemic was found to increase the risk of death from all causes (RR, 1.26; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.19 to 1.33), as well as in specific age groups such as those aged 35-49 (RR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.12 to 1.32), 50-64 (RR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.28 to 1.49), and ≥65 (RR, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.12 to 1.32) years old. Furthermore, there was an increased risk of death from cardiovascular diseases (RR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.22)., Conclusions: There was a 26% increase in the death count in southern Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of these excess deaths were not directly related to COVID-19, but rather other causes, with cardiovascular diseases being a major contributor.

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are known as an important group of risk factor for progression of the Coronavirus-19 disease (COVID-19). The present study compared epidemiological features and outcomes in COVID-19 patients with CVDs versus those without CVDs., Methods: This is a retrospective study performed on 1497 patients with CVDs and 26926 patients without CVDs, all of whom were confirmed to have COVID-19. All clinical signs and comorbidities were investigated in the subjects. Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson's Chi-square test were applied to compare mortality between the groups. Logistic regression was used to identify the predictors of mortality among patients., Results: The mean age of COVID-19 patients with underlying CVD was 60 years. Totally, about 5.3% of the individuals under study had CVD. Also, 21.6% of all deaths occurred in COVID-19 patients with CVD. Cough, fever, shortness of breath, muscle pain, and underlying diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, chronic liver and kidney disease, chronic lung disease, and immunodeficiency were significantly higher in patients with CVD than those without CVDs. The odds of death in COVID-19 patients were 1.9 times higher with underlying CVD, 2.1 times with diabetes, 3.4 times with hypertension, 1.9 times with immunodeficiency, and 2.3 times with chronic liver and kidney disease., Conclusion: CVDs are a serious threat to COVID-19 patients because they increase mortality among these patients. As a result, preventive and therapeutic strategies must be developed for these vulnerable groups, who will be prone to higher mortality., (© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.)

Background: The outbreak of the Covid-19 has been a serious threat to the health and lives of many people. This study aimed to determine the survival rate and its contributing factors in Covid- 19 patients who were hospitalized in hospitals in Fars province. Materials and Methods: This study is a hospital-based carried out on 119429 of Covid-19 hospitalized patients in the south of Iran within 2019 - 2022. Information of demographics and clinical characteristics, symptoms, and comorbidity of patients were extracted from medical records. The Kaplan--Meier curve and the Log rank test were used to compare survival rate in different groups. Cox regression was employed to determine the factors that affect survival. Results: The mean age of the participants was 51.5 year. The density incidence of death was estimated to be 16.8, 4.6, and 43.9 per 1000 person-days for all of patient, intensive care unit patients, and intubated patients, respectively. The Multiple Cox Regression results suggested that risk of mortality is 5.61 times higher in patients over 75 years, 3 times higher in patients admitted to the intensive care unit, and 3.4 times higher in intubated patients. Also, the risk of mortality was higher in men and those with underlying disease. Conclusion: We found out that being elder, being a male, hospitalization in the intensive care unit, and being intubated would increase the risk of mortality. Thus, it is treatment management of hospitalized patients is necessary, especially elderly patients and those with underlying diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: Some studies have shown that in addition to respiratory symptoms, gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations reported in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). The aim of this study was to compare the epidemiological features and consequences of COVID‐19 in patients with and without GI symptoms. Methods: This retrospective observational study concluded on 15,323 COVID‐19 patients with GI symptoms and 95,724 patients without symptoms. All symptoms and comorbidities of the patients collected. To investigate the differences between qualitative variables in the two groups, χ2 test was used. Logistic regression analysis also used to identify determinants of mortality in patients with COVID‐19. Results: During the course of the study, 111,047 cases of COVID‐19 occurred. Of these, 13.8% of patients had GI symptoms, and 9.9% of deaths due to COVID‐19 occurred in these patients. The most common reported GI symptoms among COVID‐19 patients were nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. In addition, comorbidities, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and thyroid disease were significantly higher in patients with GI symptoms. The result of multiple logistic regression showed that the chance of mortality is higher in a patient with COVID‐19 who have dyspnea, fever, cough, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immunodeficiency, chronic kidney disease, thyroid disease, chronic pulmonary disease, and male gender. The chance of death was lower in people with GI symptoms. Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea were the most common GI symptoms. Also, the chance of death is higher in people with co‐morbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Therefore, it is necessary to follow these people closely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Coronavirus is threatening the global public health as a new and widespread crisis. The researchers must keep in mind that one of the most vulnerable groups to COVID-19 are the people with underlying diseases, especially diabetes. Objective: This ecological study aimed to investigate the correlation between diabetes and the epidemiological indices of COVID-19. Methods: This ecological study included 144 countries. Their available data consists of the cumulative incidence rate of cases, cumulative incidence rate of death, recovery rate, case fatality rate, and performed tests of COVID-19, and diabetes. To collect the variables, a data set was provided which included the information of 144 countries based on diabetes and COVID-19 indices. Spearman coefficients were used for assess correlation between diabetes and COVID-19 indices. Also, Scatter plots of diabetes for the studied countries were drawn based on cumulative incidence rate of cases, cumulative incidence rate of death, tests, recovery rate, and case fatality rate of COVID-19. Results: The results of this ecological study showed in total countries, there was a weak positive correlation between diabetes and cumulative incidence rate of cases and also cumulative incidence rate of death. Correlation between diabetes with test of COVID-19 was very weak. Scatter plots showed a weak liner correlation between diabetes and cumulative incidence rate of cases, cumulative incidence rate of death and test of COVID-19. Conclusions: In this study, there was a weak positive correlation between diabetes and cumulative incidence rate of cases, cumulative incidence rate of death, and performed test of COVID-19. This disease is an enormous challenge for health policymakers; therefore, it is necessary to develop strategies and practical guidelines specific to each region to take the necessary care, especially for diabetic patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backgrounds. Individuals with hypertension are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection and related mortality. This study was carried out to assess the epidemiological features and predictors of mortality in patients with COVID-19 with hypertension. Methods. In this retrospective study, the epidemiological characteristics of two groups of patients with COVID-19 with hypertension (1927) and without hypertension (39030) were compared. Chi-square test was applied to evaluate the differences between qualitative variables in two study groups. Logistic regression was also used to determine predictors of mortality in patients with COVID-19 and in patients with COVID-19 with hypertension. Results. The prevalence of hypertension in patients with COVID-19 was 4.7%, and 24.37% of COVID-19 related deaths occurred in these individuals. The average age of hypertension and nonhypertension patients was 61 and 37 years, respectively. Fever, cough, headache, anorexia, fatigue, and comorbid diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic lung and kidney disease, diabetes, immunodeficiency disease, and thyroid disease, were significantly more frequent in people with hypertension than those without hypertension. The chances of mortality in patient with COVID-19 were 1.8 times higher in individuals with dyspnea, 1.25 in individuals with fever, 1.33 in individuals with cough, 3.6 in patients with hypertension, 2.21 in diabetics, and 2.2 in individuals with cardiovascular disease. Also, individuals with COVID-19 with hypertension that had dyspnea, immunodeficiency, and cardiovascular disease were at higher risk of mortality. Conclusion. Hypertension is a serious threat to patients with COVID-19. Therefore, in order to control these patients more precisely and reduce mortality in them, it is extremely important to develop prevention and treatment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Coronavirus, the cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome (COVID-19), is rapidly spreading around the world. Since the number of corona positive patients is increasing sharply in Iran, this study aimed to forecast the number of newly infected patients in the coming days in Iran. Methods: The data used in this study were obtained from daily reports of the Iranian Ministry of Health and the datasets provided by the Johns Hopkins University including the number of new infected cases from February 19, 2020 to March 21, 2020. The autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model was applied to predict the number of patients during the next thirty days. Results: The ARIMA model forecasted an exponential increase in the number of newly detected patients. The result of this study also show that if the spreading pattern continues the same as before, the number of daily new cases would be 3574 by April 20. Conclusion: Since this disease is highly contagious, health politicians need to make decisions to prevent its spread; otherwise, even the most advanced and capable health care systems would face problems for treating all infected patients and a substantial number of deaths will become inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]