Viruses Basel
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To date, there is no severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2-(SARS-CoV-2)-specific prognostic biomarker available. We assessed whether SARS-CoV-2 cycle threshold (Ct) value at diagnosis could predict novel CoronaVirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity, clinical manifestations, and six-month sequelae. Hospitalized and outpatient cases were randomly sampled from the diagnoses of March 2020 and data collected at 6 months by interview and from the regional database for COVID-19 emergency. ⋯ Lethality, disease severity, type, and number of signs and symptoms, as well as six-month sequelae distributed inversely among the groups with respect to SARS-CoV-2 Ct. After controlling for confounding, SARS-CoV-2 Ct at diagnosis was still associated with COVID-19-related death (p = 0.023), disease severity (p = 0.023), number of signs and symptoms (p < 0.01), and presence of six-month sequelae (p < 0.01). Early quantification of SARS-CoV-2 may be a useful predictive marker to inform differential strategies of clinical management and resource allocation.
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Monitoring acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genetic diversity and emerging mutations in this ongoing pandemic is crucial for understanding its evolution and assuring the performance of diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapies against coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This study reports on the amino acid (aa) conservation degree and the global and regional temporal evolution by epidemiological week for each residue of the following four structural SARS-CoV-2 proteins: spike, envelope, membrane, and nucleocapsid. All, 105,276 worldwide SARS-CoV-2 complete and partial sequences from 117 countries available in the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) from 29 December 2019 to 12 September 2020 were downloaded and processed using an in-house bioinformatics tool. ⋯ Mutations evolution differed across geographic regions and epidemiological weeks (epiweeks). The most prevalent aa changes were D614G (81.5%) in the spike protein, followed by the R203K and G204R combination (37%) in the nucleocapsid protein. The presented data provide insight into the genetic variability of SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins during the pandemic and highlights local and worldwide emerging aa changes of interest for further SARS-CoV-2 structural and functional analysis.