Clinical features and characteristics of pediatric patients with COVID-19 infection: Experiences in a Tertiary Taiwan Hospital.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients have distinct clinical features in the pediatric groups. However, there is a paucity of research focused on clinical manifestation within pediatric group in Taiwan. This study is to conduct a retrospective study of the clinical features of COVID-19 in Taiwan pediatric patients. A retrospective study was conducted on pediatric patients (Aged ≤ 18 years) in a Northern Taiwan hospital from May 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2021. Thirty-eight patients were included from emergency room. They were laboratory confirmed COVID-19 through specimens from nasopharyngeal swab by real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Data including RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) values, clinical and epidemiological features were collected and analyzed. Thirty-eight patients aged from 7-month to 18-year-old were included. The median age of patients was 15-year-old. The patients had sex ratio of 23 males to 15 females. More than half patients were infected from family members. Asymptomatic patients were 47.37%. In the symptomatic patients, fever (34.21%) was the most predominant symptom. Cough, nasal obstruction and sore throat were also common. Asymptomatic children had significantly higher Ct-values than symptomatic children, and diagnosed patients with Ct-values more than 19 were associated with asymptomatic infection (P = .0084). Ct-values higher than 19 were associated with asymptomatic infection, which may be a predictor of pediatric disease severity. Our results highlight the distinct clinical manifestations and outcomes in pediatric COVID-19 patients. Compared to the adults, pediatric patients aged ≤ 18 years with COVID-19 in Taiwan mainly had mild disease.

The Human Virome: Viral Metagenomics, Relations with Human Diseases, and Therapeutic Applications.

The human body is colonized by a wide range of microorganisms. The field of viromics has expanded since the first reports on the detection of viruses via metagenomic sequencing in 2002. With the continued development of reference materials and databases, viral metagenomic approaches have been used to explore known components of the virome and discover new viruses from various types of samples. The virome has attracted substantial interest since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Increasing numbers of studies and review articles have documented the diverse virome in various sites in the human body, as well as interactions between the human host and the virome with regard to health and disease. However, there have been few studies of direct causal relationships. Viral metagenomic analyses often lack standard references and are potentially subject to bias. Moreover, most virome-related review articles have focused on the gut virome and did not investigate the roles of the virome in other sites of the body in human disease. This review presents an overview of viral metagenomics, with updates regarding the relations between alterations in the human virome and the pathogenesis of human diseases, recent findings related to COVID-19, and therapeutic applications related to the human virome.