{"doi":"10.1101/2020.04.29.20085233","title":"The Utility of rRT-PCR in Diagnosis and Assessment of Case-fatality rates of COVID-19 In the Iranian Population – Positive Test Results are a Marker for Illness Severity","abstract":"The utility of PCR-based testing in characterizing patients with COVID-19 and the severity of their disease remains unknown. We performed an observational study among patients presenting to hospitals in Iran who were tested for 2019-nCoV viral RNA by rRT-PCR between the fourth week of February 2020 to the fourth week of March 2020. Frequency of symptoms, comorbidities, intubation, and mortality rates were compared between COVID-19 positive vs. negative patients. 96103 patients were tested from 879 hospitals. 18754 (19.5%) tested positive for COVID-19. Positive testing was more frequent in those 50 years or older. The prevalence of cough (54.5% vs. 49.7%), fever (49.5% vs. 44.7%), and respiratory distress (43.0% vs. 39.0%) but not hypoxia (46.9% vs. 56.7%) was higher in COVID-19 positive vs. negative patients (p<0.001 for all). More patients had cardiovascular diseases (10.6% vs. 9.5%, p<0.001) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (10.8% vs. 8.7%, p<0.001) among COVID-19 positive vs. negative patients. There were fewer patients with cancer (1.1%, vs. 1.4%, p<0.001), asthma (1.9% vs. 2.5%, p<0.001), or pregnant (0.4% vs. 0.6%, =0.001) in COVID-19 positive vs. negative groups. COVID-19 positive vs. negative patients required more intubation (7.7% vs. 5.2%, p<0.001) and had higher mortality (14.6% vs. 6.3%, p<0.001). Odds ratios for death of positive vs negative patients range from 2.01 to 3.10 across all age groups. In conclusion, COVID-19 test-positive vs. test-negative patients had more severe symptoms and comorbidities, required higher intubation, and had higher mortality. rRT-PCR positive result provided diagnosis and a marker of disease severity in Iranians.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2020,"id":129478,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9466,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":336277,"name":"Eric Brandt","orcid":"0000-0001-5463-4533","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581771,"name":"Reza Golpira","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581019,"name":"Alireza Raeisi","orcid":"0000-0003-0755-5976","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581020,"name":"Jafar Sadegh Tabrizi","orcid":"0000-0002-1458-8672","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581772,"name":"Hamid Reza Safikhani","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581021,"name":"Mohammad Taghi Talebian","orcid":"0000-0001-9071-7846","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581022,"name":"Siamak Mirab Samiee","orcid":"0000-0002-9949-3428","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581773,"name":"Alireza Biglar","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":22644,"name":"Reza Malekzadeh","orcid":"0000-0003-1043-3814","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":471888,"name":"Arya Mani","orcid":"0000-0001-6699-259X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":581770,"name":"Ghasem Janbabaei","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":10,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:49.682497Z","pmid":"32511637","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}