Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 22|pp 22399—22404

Impact of age on duration of viral RNA shedding in patients with COVID-19

Chenliang Zhou¹, Tianfang Zhang², Haotang Ren², Shanshan Sun², Xia Yu², Jifang Sheng², Yu Shi², Hong Zhao²

¹Department of Critical Care Medicine, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430000, China
²State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310003, China

* Equal contribution

Received: June 2, 2020Accepted: September 9, 2020Published: November 20, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Zhou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the host factors of patients with COVID-19 that were associated with delayed viral RNA clearance in specimens obtained from the upper respiratory tract.

Results: A median of a 32-day period of viral RNA shedding was observed, ranging from 4 days to 111 days. On multivariate analysis, elderly age was independently associated with prolonged viral shedding (OR = 1.02, 95% CI: 1.01–1.04, P = 0.003). An incremental increase in the duration of viral RNA shedding was observed with increasing age (P < 0.05). The median (quartile) duration of viral RNA shedding was 23 (22) days (≤ 40 years), 30 (18) days (41–50 years), 33 (21) days (51–60 years), 34 (17) days (61–70 years) and 34 (17) days (> 70 years).

Conclusions: Viral RNA shedding can persist for as long as 111 days in the upper respiratory tract. Increasing age is associated with viral RNA persistence.

Method: The demographic and virological data of patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were retrospectively analyzed. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to identify significant risk factors associated with delayed viral RNA clearance. The duration of viral shedding was compared among age-stratified groups.