Symptomatic reinfection with COVID-19: A first from Western India.

The reinfection of recovered COVID-19 patient is one of the major concerns worldwide. Here we report a case of previously recovered patient from Covid-19 who presented with symptomatic reinfection beyond 3 months. We report a case of 58 year old female patient who after presenting with symptomatic episode of RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 in April 2020, presented with a new symptomatic infection by SARS-CoV-2 four months later. These 2 episodes of infection were caused by different sources as evident from her epidemiological correlates. This is the first epidemiologically, RAT, RT-PCR and antibody confirmed COVID-19 case of re-infection of SARS CoV-2 reported from Western India.

Prevalence and Patterns of Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Asian Indians With Congestive Heart Failure.

Background Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) has a potential association with the pathogenesis of congestive heart failure (CHF). We assessed the prevalence and patterns of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in patients presenting with CHF. Method This was a prospective, observational, all-comers study of consecutive 77 confirmed cases of CHF. All these patients were clinically assessed and evaluated for OSA with sleep study after routine blood testing, electrocardiogram (ECG), chest X-ray, and echocardiography. Results Of 77 patients with CHF 38 (49.4%) had apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) <5 while 39 (50.6%) had AHI >5. Of these 39, 37 (94.8%) patients showed the clinical features of OSA. The majority (64.9%) of them were males. The majority of OSA (64.9%) had coronary artery disease (CAD) (p<0.05) as the etiology of CHF, followed by dilated cardiomyopathy (32.4%) and valvular heart disease (2.7%). The prevalence of OSA was higher amongst New York Heart Association (NYHA) class 2 (51.4%) as compared to NYHA class 3 (37.8%) and NYHA class 4 (10.8%). There were 12 (32.8%) patients, each having OSA with a heart rate between 71 and 80 bpm and 81 and 90 bpm. Twenty-two (59.5%) had systolic blood pressure (BP) more than 120 mmHg and 20 (54.1%) had diastolic BP more than 80 mmHg. The majority (64.9%) patients had the lowest O2 saturation between 80% and 90%. A significantly large number of patients (62.2%) had ejection fraction 21%-30% (p<0.05). The majority (62.16%) of patients with OSA had AHI between 5 and 15. With 5-15 AHI, 20 (87%) patients with OSA had a snoring, tiredness, observed apnea, high BP, BMI, age, neck circumference, and male gender (STOP-Bang) score between 3 and 7 with AHI 5-15 (p<0.05). Conclusions In our cohort, the prevalence of OSA in CHF was 50.6%. Predictors of OSA in CHF were left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) 20%-30% and NYHA class 2. The majority had AHI between 5 and 15. Sleep apnea screening should be routinely implemented in the evaluation and follow-up of heart failure patients.

Predictors of Arterial Stiffness Amongst the 24-Hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure Variables in Hypertensive Patients.

Objective The objective of the study is to identify the predominant determinants of arterial stiffness as assessed by pulse-wave-velocity (PVW) amongst various 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) parameters in Indian hypertensive subjects. Method Subjects of both genders between 18-60 years with hypertension and who were either drug naïve or on stable anti-hypertensive treatment for at least three months were included in the study. All subjects underwent clinical evaluation with a medical history, biochemical investigations, and assessment of arterial stiffness by PWV along with 24-hour ABPM. Results We found the males were younger than females amongst hypertensive cohort (41.53 ± 10.89 years vs. 52.2 ± 5.17 years, respectively; p=0.001) and had shorter duration of hypertension (41.42 ± 49.14 months vs. 87.8 ± 74.55 months, respectively; p=0.012) and had lower 24-hour average pulse pressure (aPP; 49.1 ± 7.8 mm Hg vs. 57.83 ± 8.92 mm Hg, respectively; p=0.001) at baseline. Younger people (<40-years) as compared to those >40-years of age had the lower carotid-femoral (cf) PWV (972.8 ± 125.0 cm/sec vs. 1165.0 ± 208.4 cm/sec, respectively; p=0.001) and average brachial-ankle (ba) PWV (1413.7 ± 160.4 cm/sec and 1640.0 ± 227.1 cm/sec, respectively; p=0.001). Bivariate analysis revealed that amongst all the 24-hour ABPM parameters, 24-hour aPP had the strongest correlation (r=0.414, p=0.003) with arterial stiffness as assessed by PWV. Also, statistically significant correlation was found in age group <40 years between cf-PWV and both 24-hour aPP (r=0.54, p=0.025) as well as night-time aPP (r=0.59, p=0.013) Conclusion We conclude that 24-hour aPP showed the strongest correlation with arterial stiffness parameters and best correlated with arterial stiffness variables amongst 24-hour ABPM parameters, especially amongst subjects <40 years of age. The pulsatile blood pressure (BP) was a better predictor of aortic PWV than the continuous part of BP.