Concomitant Guillain-Barre syndrome with COVID-19: a case report

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Background

During the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, different neurological manifestations have been observed. However, only a few cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) and COVID-19 have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate a case of concomitant GBS with COVID-19 in Colombia.

Case presentation

A 39-year-old woman was admitted to a teaching hospital in Barranquilla, Colombia with a history of progressive general weakness with lower limb dominance. Previous symptoms such as ageusia, anosmia and intense headache were reported. Upon admission, facial diplegia, quadriparesis with lower extremity predominance and Medical Research Council muscular strength of 2/5 in the lower limbs and 4/5 in the upper limbs were reported. During clinical evolution, due to general areflexia, hypertensive emergency and progressive diaphragmatic weakness, the patient was admitted to an intensive care unit. The cerebrospinal fluid analysis showed protein-cytological dissociation and the GBS diagnosis was confirmed via a nerve conduction and electromyography test. With regard to the symptoms before hospitalisation, SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing was performed with positive results in the second test. The patient was managed with supportive care and was discharged after 20 days of hospitalization with clinical improvement.

Conclusions

Only a few cases of COVID-19 with GBS have been reported. Different subtypes have been previously identified, such as Miller-Fisher syndrome and dysautonomic GBS with SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study investigated the first confirmed case of COVID-19 with concomitant GBS in Colombia. In patients with GBS, several viral and bacterial pathogens have been found in case-control studies but the factors that induce the immune-mediated destruction of the nerve tissues have not been determined. Further studies are needed to determine the possible association between COVID-19 exposure and GBS.

Related collections

Most cited references 19

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China

Chaolin Huang, Yeming Wang, Xingwang Li … (2020)

Summary Background A recent cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, was caused by a novel betacoronavirus, the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). We report the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics and treatment and clinical outcomes of these patients. Methods All patients with suspected 2019-nCoV were admitted to a designated hospital in Wuhan. We prospectively collected and analysed data on patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection by real-time RT-PCR and next-generation sequencing. Data were obtained with standardised data collection forms shared by WHO and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium from electronic medical records. Researchers also directly communicated with patients or their families to ascertain epidemiological and symptom data. Outcomes were also compared between patients who had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and those who had not. Findings By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection. Most of the infected patients were men (30 [73%] of 41); less than half had underlying diseases (13 [32%]), including diabetes (eight [20%]), hypertension (six [15%]), and cardiovascular disease (six [15%]). Median age was 49·0 years (IQR 41·0–58·0). 27 (66%) of 41 patients had been exposed to Huanan seafood market. One family cluster was found. Common symptoms at onset of illness were fever (40 [98%] of 41 patients), cough (31 [76%]), and myalgia or fatigue (18 [44%]); less common symptoms were sputum production (11 [28%] of 39), headache (three [8%] of 38), haemoptysis (two [5%] of 39), and diarrhoea (one [3%] of 38). Dyspnoea developed in 22 (55%) of 40 patients (median time from illness onset to dyspnoea 8·0 days [IQR 5·0–13·0]). 26 (63%) of 41 patients had lymphopenia. All 41 patients had pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT. Complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome (12 [29%]), RNAaemia (six [15%]), acute cardiac injury (five [12%]) and secondary infection (four [10%]). 13 (32%) patients were admitted to an ICU and six (15%) died. Compared with non-ICU patients, ICU patients had higher plasma levels of IL2, IL7, IL10, GSCF, IP10, MCP1, MIP1A, and TNFα. Interpretation The 2019-nCoV infection caused clusters of severe respiratory illness similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and was associated with ICU admission and high mortality. Major gaps in our knowledge of the origin, epidemiology, duration of human transmission, and clinical spectrum of disease need fulfilment by future studies. Funding Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

0 comments Cited 22678 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time

Ensheng Dong, Hongru Du, Lauren Gardner (2020)

In December, 2019, a local outbreak of pneumonia of initially unknown cause was detected in Wuhan (Hubei, China), and was quickly determined to be caused by a novel coronavirus, 1 namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The outbreak has since spread to every province of mainland China as well as 27 other countries and regions, with more than 70 000 confirmed cases as of Feb 17, 2020. 2 In response to this ongoing public health emergency, we developed an online interactive dashboard, hosted by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, to visualise and track reported cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in real time. The dashboard, first shared publicly on Jan 22, illustrates the location and number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recoveries for all affected countries. It was developed to provide researchers, public health authorities, and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds. All data collected and displayed are made freely available, initially through Google Sheets and now through a GitHub repository, along with the feature layers of the dashboard, which are now included in the Esri Living Atlas. The dashboard reports cases at the province level in China; at the city level in the USA, Australia, and Canada; and at the country level otherwise. During Jan 22–31, all data collection and processing were done manually, and updates were typically done twice a day, morning and night (US Eastern Time). As the outbreak evolved, the manual reporting process became unsustainable; therefore, on Feb 1, we adopted a semi-automated living data stream strategy. Our primary data source is DXY, an online platform run by members of the Chinese medical community, which aggregates local media and government reports to provide cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases in near real time at the province level in China and at the country level otherwise. Every 15 min, the cumulative case counts are updated from DXY for all provinces in China and for other affected countries and regions. For countries and regions outside mainland China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), we found DXY cumulative case counts to frequently lag behind other sources; we therefore manually update these case numbers throughout the day when new cases are identified. To identify new cases, we monitor various Twitter feeds, online news services, and direct communication sent through the dashboard. Before manually updating the dashboard, we confirm the case numbers with regional and local health departments, including the respective centres for disease control and prevention (CDC) of China, Taiwan, and Europe, the Hong Kong Department of Health, the Macau Government, and WHO, as well as city-level and state-level health authorities. For city-level case reports in the USA, Australia, and Canada, which we began reporting on Feb 1, we rely on the US CDC, the government of Canada, the Australian Government Department of Health, and various state or territory health authorities. All manual updates (for countries and regions outside mainland China) are coordinated by a team at Johns Hopkins University. The case data reported on the dashboard aligns with the daily Chinese CDC 3 and WHO situation reports 2 for within and outside of mainland China, respectively (figure ). Furthermore, the dashboard is particularly effective at capturing the timing of the first reported case of COVID-19 in new countries or regions (appendix). With the exception of Australia, Hong Kong, and Italy, the CSSE at Johns Hopkins University has reported newly infected countries ahead of WHO, with Hong Kong and Italy reported within hours of the corresponding WHO situation report. Figure Comparison of COVID-19 case reporting from different sources Daily cumulative case numbers (starting Jan 22, 2020) reported by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE), WHO situation reports, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) for within (A) and outside (B) mainland China. Given the popularity and impact of the dashboard to date, we plan to continue hosting and managing the tool throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 outbreak and to build out its capabilities to establish a standing tool to monitor and report on future outbreaks. We believe our efforts are crucial to help inform modelling efforts and control measures during the earliest stages of the outbreak.

0 comments Cited 4804 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Neurological associations of COVID-19

Mark Ellul, Laura Benjamin, Bhagteshwar Singh … (2020)

Summary Background The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is of a scale not seen since the 1918 influenza pandemic. Although the predominant clinical presentation is with respiratory disease, neurological manifestations are being recognised increasingly. On the basis of knowledge of other coronaviruses, especially those that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome epidemics, cases of CNS and peripheral nervous system disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 might be expected to be rare. Recent developments A growing number of case reports and series describe a wide array of neurological manifestations in 901 patients, but many have insufficient detail, reflecting the challenge of studying such patients. Encephalopathy has been reported for 93 patients in total, including 16 (7%) of 214 hospitalised patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, and 40 (69%) of 58 patients in intensive care with COVID-19 in France. Encephalitis has been described in eight patients to date, and Guillain-Barré syndrome in 19 patients. SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in the CSF of some patients. Anosmia and ageusia are common, and can occur in the absence of other clinical features. Unexpectedly, acute cerebrovascular disease is also emerging as an important complication, with cohort studies reporting stroke in 2–6% of patients hospitalised with COVID-19. So far, 96 patients with stroke have been described, who frequently had vascular events in the context of a pro-inflammatory hypercoagulable state with elevated C-reactive protein, D-dimer, and ferritin. Where next? Careful clinical, diagnostic, and epidemiological studies are needed to help define the manifestations and burden of neurological disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Precise case definitions must be used to distinguish non-specific complications of severe disease (eg, hypoxic encephalopathy and critical care neuropathy) from those caused directly or indirectly by the virus, including infectious, para-infectious, and post-infectious encephalitis, hypercoagulable states leading to stroke, and acute neuropathies such as Guillain-Barré syndrome. Recognition of neurological disease associated with SARS-CoV-2 in patients whose respiratory infection is mild or asymptomatic might prove challenging, especially if the primary COVID-19 illness occurred weeks earlier. The proportion of infections leading to neurological disease will probably remain small. However, these patients might be left with severe neurological sequelae. With so many people infected, the overall number of neurological patients, and their associated health burden and social and economic costs might be large. Health-care planners and policy makers must prepare for this eventuality, while the many ongoing studies investigating neurological associations increase our knowledge base.

0 comments Cited 1108 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Hernan Felipe Guillen-Burgos:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-431X

hernan.guillen@unisimonbolivar.edu.co

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Neurol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Neurol

Title: BMC Neurology

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2377

Publication date (Electronic): 23 March 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 23 March 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 21

Electronic Location Identifier: 135

Affiliations

[1 ]Center for Clinical and Translational Research, La Misericordia Clínica Internacional, Barranquilla, Colombia

[2 ]GRID grid.266102.1, ISNI 0000 0001 2297 6811, Rosalind Russell/Ephraim P Engleman Rheumatology Research Center, , University of California, ; San Francisco, California USA

[3 ]GRID grid.441873.d, ISNI 0000 0001 2150 6105, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, ; Barranquilla, Colombia

Author information

Hernan Felipe Guillen-Burgos http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-431X

Article

Publisher ID: 2162

DOI: 10.1186/s12883-021-02162-3

PMC ID: 7985584

PubMed ID: 33757457

SO-VID: 66e47120-8dc2-4990-8043-34aab771bdb3

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 24 July 2020

Date accepted : 18 March 2021

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: covid-19,sars-cov-2,guillain-barre syndrome,case report

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: covid-19, sars-cov-2, guillain-barre syndrome, case report

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_

Smart Citations

Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting

View Citations

See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.

Cited by 14

See all cited by

Most referenced authors 1,536

See all reference authors

Concomitant Guillain-Barre syndrome with COVID-19: a case report

Read this article at

Abstract

Background

Case presentation

Conclusions

Related collections

Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 19

Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China

An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time

Neurological associations of COVID-19

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Author information

Article

History

Categories

Custom metadata

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 600

Cited by 14

Most referenced authors 1,536