Copyright
©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Jul 9, 2021; 10(4): 132-150
Published online Jul 9, 2021. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v10.i4.132
Published online Jul 9, 2021. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v10.i4.132
SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), viral load and clinical outcomes; lessons learned one year into the pandemic: A systematic review
Santosh Shenoy, Department of General and Colorectal Surgery, KCVA and University of Missouri at Kansas City, Missouri, MO 64128, United States
Author contributions: Shenoy S designed the study, performed the literature search, wrote and analyzed the data, revised and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares that he has no competing interests.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The author has read the PRISMA 2009 checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Santosh Shenoy, MD, Professor, Department of General and Colorectal Surgery, KCVA and University of Missouri at Kansas City, 4801 E Linwood Blvd., Missouri, MO 64128, United States. shenoy2009@hotmail.com
Received: February 5, 2021
Peer-review started: February 5, 2021
First decision: March 17, 2021
Revised: March 21, 2021
Accepted: June 15, 2021
Article in press: June 15, 2021
Published online: July 9, 2021
Peer-review started: February 5, 2021
First decision: March 17, 2021
Revised: March 21, 2021
Accepted: June 15, 2021
Article in press: June 15, 2021
Published online: July 9, 2021
Core Tip
Core Tip: High viral load in Coronavirus-2 infections is an independent predictor of disease severity, mortality and prognosis. However there is a wide heterogeneity in fluid samples at different phases of the disease and data should be interpreted with caution. In aggregate, observations support the hypothesis of checking and reporting viral load by quantitative real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, instead of binary assessment of a test being positive or negative. Longitudinal analysis with viral loads should be conducted for interpretation of outcome data. This may be the guiding principle for therapy and infection control policies for future pandemics.