Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, COVID -19 Coronavirus / 25.03.2021
COVID-19: SARS2 Risk Equations Estimate Risk of Hospitalization and Death
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
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Dr. Dashti[/caption]
Hesam Dashti, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Senior Computational Scientist
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What parameters does the SARS2 score take into consideration?
Response: While complex models have been developed for predicting the severity of COVID-19 from the medical history, laboratory, and imaging results of patients, simplified models with similar accuracy would be more practical for individualizing the decision making, especially when detailed medical history of patients is not readily available. In this study, we developed the SARS2 risk equations for estimating risk of hospitalization of patients with COVID-19 and also the risk of mortality among hospitalized patients. The “SARS2” risk equations are named for their input variables: Sex, Age, Race, Socioeconomic and Smoking status.
To develop and validate the models, we used the electronic records from 12,347 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 at the Mass General Brigham medical centers in Massachusetts between 02/26/2020 and 07/14/2020 to construct derivation and validation cohorts for estimating 1) risk of hospitalization within 30 days of COVID-19 positive PCR test, and 2) for the hospitalized patients, risk of mortality within approximately 3 months.
Dr. Dashti[/caption]
Hesam Dashti, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Senior Computational Scientist
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What parameters does the SARS2 score take into consideration?
Response: While complex models have been developed for predicting the severity of COVID-19 from the medical history, laboratory, and imaging results of patients, simplified models with similar accuracy would be more practical for individualizing the decision making, especially when detailed medical history of patients is not readily available. In this study, we developed the SARS2 risk equations for estimating risk of hospitalization of patients with COVID-19 and also the risk of mortality among hospitalized patients. The “SARS2” risk equations are named for their input variables: Sex, Age, Race, Socioeconomic and Smoking status.
To develop and validate the models, we used the electronic records from 12,347 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 at the Mass General Brigham medical centers in Massachusetts between 02/26/2020 and 07/14/2020 to construct derivation and validation cohorts for estimating 1) risk of hospitalization within 30 days of COVID-19 positive PCR test, and 2) for the hospitalized patients, risk of mortality within approximately 3 months.
Matt Spick[/caption]
Matt Spick, Post-Graduate Researcher
University of Surrey
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
Guildford, UK
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Are you measuring lipids or the virus?
Response: In this study, we aimed to detect what the virus does to us, rather than the virus itself. The gold standard for detecting COVID-19 is the RT-PCR test, but by their nature, PCR tests only provide diagnostic information, and at times during the pandemic the availability of PCR tests has been a bottleneck for the identification of the disease. Our goal was to investigate a novel method for the diagnosis of COVID-19, at the same time as learning more about what the disease does to us through lipidomics.
Benjamin E. Gewurz MD, PhD
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge,
Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
Department of Microbiology, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: When the Covid-19 virus infects cells, it takes over and redirects our cells resources towards the projection of virus building blocks and new viruses. Building blocks include large amounts of RNAs that encode for the viral proteins, much as the mRNA vaccines direct our bodies to make the spike protein. We wondered how the virus changes cell metabolism in order to support the synthesis of vast amounts of viral RNAs within hours of infection.
Shane Riddell[/caption]
Shane Riddell MSc
CSIRO—Australian Animal Health Laboratory
Geelong, Australia
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: While it is generally considered that SARS-CoV-2 is spread via aerosol and respiratory droplets, we still need to investigate how much of a role fomites play in transmission.
Understanding the risk first requires you to know how long the virus can survive on a surface. We therefore wanted to assess how long the virus would remain viable on various common surfaces such as stainless steel, glass and banknotes. We found that, under controlled conditions, we could recover infectious virus at 28 days for all non-porous surfaces at 20 degrees Celsius. When the temperature was raised to 40 degrees Celsius, SARS-CoV-2 only remained viable for 24hrs on most surfaces.
