College of Public Health and Health Informatics, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
National Health Laboratory, Saudi Center for Disease Prevention and Control (Saudi CDC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Biomed Res Int. 2020 Feb 19;2020:9629747. doi: 10.1155/2020/9629747. eCollection 2020.
. Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus was first recognized in September 2012 in Saudi Arabia. The clinical presentations of MERS and non-MERS SARI are often similar. Therefore, the identification of suspected cases that may have higher chances of being diagnosed as cases of MERS-CoV is essential. However, the real challenge is to flag these patients through some demographic markers. The nature of these markers has not previously been investigated in Saudi Arabia, and hence, this study aims to identify them.
It was a surveillance system-based study, for which data from a total of 23,646 suspected patients in Riyadh and Al Qassim regions were analyzed from January 2017 until December 2017 to estimate the prevalence of MERS-CoV among suspected cases and to determine potential demographic risk factors related to the confirmation of the diagnosis.
Of 23,646 suspected cases, 119 (0.5%) were confirmed by laboratory results. These confirmed cases (67.2% of which were males) had a mean age of 43.23 years (SD ± 22.8). Around 42.2% of the confirmed cases were aged between 41 and 60 years and about 47% of confirmed cases had their suspected specimen tested in the summer. The study identified three significant and independent predictors for confirmation of the disease: an age between 41 and 60 years, male gender, and summer season admission.
The study provides evidence that the MERS-CoV epidemic in the subject regions has specific characteristics that might help future plans for the prevention and management of such a contagious disease. Future studies should aim to confirm such findings in other regions of Saudi Arabia as well and explore potential preventable risk factors.
. 中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒于 2012 年 9 月在沙特阿拉伯首次被发现。MERS 和非 MERS SARS 的临床症状通常相似。因此，识别可能更有可能被诊断为 MERS-CoV 病例的疑似病例至关重要。然而，真正的挑战是通过一些人口统计学标记来标记这些患者。这些标记的性质以前在沙特阿拉伯尚未进行过研究，因此，本研究旨在确定这些标记。
这是一项基于监测系统的研究，对 2017 年 1 月至 2017 年 12 月期间利雅得和盖西姆地区的总共 23646 例疑似患者的数据进行了分析，以估计 MERS-CoV 在疑似病例中的流行率，并确定与确诊相关的潜在人口统计学危险因素。
在 23646 例疑似病例中，有 119 例（0.5%）通过实验室结果得到证实。这些确诊病例（其中 67.2%为男性）的平均年龄为 43.23 岁（标准差±22.8）。约 42.2%的确诊病例年龄在 41 至 60 岁之间，约 47%的确诊病例疑似样本在夏季进行了检测。研究确定了三个对确诊疾病有重要且独立的预测因素：年龄在 41 至 60 岁之间、男性和夏季入院。
本研究提供了证据表明，在研究地区的 MERS-CoV 流行具有特定特征，这可能有助于未来制定预防和管理此类传染病的计划。未来的研究应旨在在沙特阿拉伯的其他地区证实这些发现，并探讨潜在的可预防危险因素。
