UMMS Affiliation

Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences

Publication Date

2021-12-01

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Bioinformatics | Computational Biology | Data Science | Diagnosis | Immunology and Infectious Disease | Infectious Disease | Microbiology | Virus Diseases

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Numerous publications describe the clinical manifestations of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC or "long COVID"), but they are difficult to integrate because of heterogeneous methods and the lack of a standard for denoting the many phenotypic manifestations. Patient-led studies are of particular importance for understanding the natural history of COVID-19, but integration is hampered because they often use different terms to describe the same symptom or condition. This significant disparity in patient versus clinical characterization motivated the proposed ontological approach to specifying manifestations, which will improve capture and integration of future long COVID studies.

METHODS: The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) is a widely used standard for exchange and analysis of phenotypic abnormalities in human disease but has not yet been applied to the analysis of COVID-19.

FUNDING: We identified 303 articles published before April 29, 2021, curated 59 relevant manuscripts that described clinical manifestations in 81 cohorts three weeks or more following acute COVID-19, and mapped 287 unique clinical findings to HPO terms. We present layperson synonyms and definitions that can be used to link patient self-report questionnaires to standard medical terminology. Long COVID clinical manifestations are not assessed consistently across studies, and most manifestations have been reported with a wide range of synonyms by different authors. Across at least 10 cohorts, authors reported 31 unique clinical features corresponding to HPO terms; the most commonly reported feature was Fatigue (median 45.1%) and the least commonly reported was Nausea (median 3.9%), but the reported percentages varied widely between studies.

INTERPRETATION: Translating long COVID manifestations into computable HPO terms will improve analysis, data capture, and classification of long COVID patients. If researchers, clinicians, and patients share a common language, then studies can be compared/pooled more effectively. Furthermore, mapping lay terminology to HPO will help patients assist clinicians and researchers in creating phenotypic characterizations that are computationally accessible, thereby improving the stratification, diagnosis, and treatment of long COVID.

FUNDING: U24TR002306; UL1TR001439; P30AG024832; GBMF4552; R01HG010067; UL1TR002535; K23HL128909; UL1TR002389; K99GM145411.

Keywords

COVID-19, human phenotype ontology, long COVID, of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, phenotyping

Rights and Permissions

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

DOI of Published Version

10.1016/j.ebiom.2021.103722

Source

Deer RR, Rock MA, Vasilevsky N, Carmody L, Rando H, Anzalone AJ, Basson MD, Bennett TD, Bergquist T, Boudreau EA, Bramante CT, Byrd JB, Callahan TJ, Chan LE, Chu H, Chute CG, Coleman BD, Davis HE, Gagnier J, Greene CS, Hillegass WB, Kavuluru R, Kimble WD, Koraishy FM, Köhler S, Liang C, Liu F, Liu H, Madhira V, Madlock-Brown CR, Matentzoglu N, Mazzotti DR, McMurry JA, McNair DS, Moffitt RA, Monteith TS, Parker AM, Perry MA, Pfaff E, Reese JT, Saltz J, Schuff RA, Solomonides AE, Solway J, Spratt H, Stein GS, Sule AA, Topaloglu U, Vavougios GD, Wang L, Haendel MA, Robinson PN. Characterizing Long COVID: Deep Phenotype of a Complex Condition. EBioMedicine. 2021 Dec;74:103722. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2021.103722. Epub 2021 Nov 25. PMID: 34839263; PMCID: PMC8613500. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

EBioMedicine

Comments

This article is based on a previously available preprint in medRxiv.

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

34839263

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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