Badawi A, Vasileva D. Comparative profile for COVID-19 cases from China and North America: Clinical symptoms, comorbidities and disease biomarkers. World J Clin Cases 2021; 9(1): 118-132 [PMID: 33511177 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i1.118]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Alaa Badawi, PhD, Professor, Senior Researcher, Public Health Risk Sciences Division, Public Health Agency of Canada, 180 Queen Street West, Toronto M5V3L7, ON, Canada. alaa.badawi@canada.ca
Research Domain of This Article
Infectious Diseases
Article-Type of This Article
Systematic Reviews
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
World J Clin Cases. Jan 6, 2021; 9(1): 118-132 Published online Jan 6, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i1.118
Comparative profile for COVID-19 cases from China and North America: Clinical symptoms, comorbidities and disease biomarkers
Alaa Badawi, Denitsa Vasileva
Alaa Badawi, Public Health Risk Sciences Division, Public Health Agency of Canada, Toronto M5V3L7, ON, Canada
Alaa Badawi, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S1A8, ON, Canada
Denitsa Vasileva, Center for Heart Lung Innovation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6Z1Y6, BC, Canada
Author contributions: Badawi A conceived the study idea and design, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation and wrote the manuscript; Vasileva D assisted in the screening and selection of the evaluated studies; both authors critically reviewed the manuscript, approved the final draft and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have 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: Alaa Badawi, PhD, Professor, Senior Researcher, Public Health Risk Sciences Division, Public Health Agency of Canada, 180 Queen Street West, Toronto M5V3L7, ON, Canada. alaa.badawi@canada.ca
Received: September 15, 2020 Peer-review started: September 15, 2020 First decision: October 18, 2020 Revised: November 2, 2020 Accepted: November 21, 2020 Article in press: November 21, 2020 Published online: January 6, 2021 Processing time: 107 Days and 21.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The study evaluates the inter-population differences in the susceptibility to acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) between China and North America. Fever, cough, fatigue and dyspnea were the most common clinical symptoms of COVID-19 in both study regions. Hypertension, diabetes and cancer were the most prevalent comorbidities in COVID-19 cases from China whereas obesity, hypertension and diabetes were the most prevalent in North America. Prevalence of comorbidities in COVID-19 cases increased with age but was at younger ages in cases from China compared to those from North America. Inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein were 4.5-fold higher in the North American cases than in cases from China. The differences in COVID-19 profile between China and North America reflects the differences in environmental-, host- and healthcare-related factors between the two regions.
