Pain Symptoms in Patients with Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): A Literature Review

Abstract

the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. It brought substantial physical and psychological burden on individuals and financial loss across countries. Patients with COVID-19 may exhibit various symptoms, such as fever, cough, dyspnea, muscle pain, sore throat, headache, chest pain, and abdominal pain, at 2-14 days after exposure to the novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS]-CoV-2). Pain symptoms present important challenge to clinicians' diagnosis when treating COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms. Considering the increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, the pain symptoms should be systematically summarized. Results: The virus can invade different tissues of the body and cause different pain manifestations. SARS-CoV-2 primarily invades the respiratory system, and patients develop sore throat, fever, cough, and other pneumonia-associated symptoms. Moreover, it infects the nervous system (eg, headache, dizziness, and confusion), digestive system (eg, abdominal pain, diarrhea), and cardiovascular system (eg, chest pain, palmus, and cardiac injury). The incidence rate is 1.7-33.9% for headache, 0.7-47.1% for sore throat, 1.5-61.0% for myalgia/ arthralgia, 1.6-17.7% for chest pain, and 1.9-14.5% for abdominal pain. In comparison with chest and abdominal pain, COVID-19 patients are more likely to develop headache, sore throat, and myalgia/arthralgia. Conclusion: Different pain reflects the damage of different body systems. Therefore, the summary of pain symptoms for COVID-19 patients can help doctors improve the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosis when treating COVID-19 patients with atypical or mild symptoms and adopt more targeted treatment methods.

Epidemiological and Clinical Characteristics of COVID-19: A Retrospective Multi-Center Study in Pakistan

“…A single-center study from Pakistan has depicted a similar trend of clinical symptoms as our study (60). Other studies have reported a similar set of signs and symptoms (61)(62)(63). However, 4.12% of the total patient population remained asymptomatic.…”

“…Surprisingly, 6.70% of the patients reported a loss of sense of smell and taste which along with other symptoms, is a strong predictor of COVID-19 infection (66)(67)(68)(69). Moreover, flu, myalgia, nausea, cold, anorexia, sore throat, dizziness, redness of the eyes, and anxiety were also reported (45,63,70).…”

“Post-COVID syndrome”: The focus is on musculoskeletal pain

“…Миалгии и артралгии относятся к числу характерных проявлений вирусной инфекции. Эти симптомы возникают у 50-90% больных в остром периоде COVID-19, при этом их частота и выраженность коррелируют с тяжестью течения заболевания и наличием стойкой фебрильной лихорадки [28].…”

Musculoskeletal pain and physical health status among confirmed COVID-19 patients of Bangladesh

“…Majority of the male and female respondents suffered from headache (22.89%) followed by hip pain (21.84%). According to another study 17 , patients with SARS Cov-2 also reported myalgia (49.3-60.9%), headache (35.4-55.8%), sore throat (12.5-23.2%), chest pain (10.4%), and abdominal pain (3.5%). Similar result found in a literature review 18 , the most common musculoskeletal manifestation found by them was myalgia (48 studies; 80%).…”