Analysis of the Similarities and Differences of COVID-19 Symptoms Description in North and South China from the Perspective of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine/ 中西医学视角下中国北方和南方地区COVID-19症状描述的异同性分析

Objective To reveal the similarities and differences of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) symptoms in North and South China, and to promote the prevention and treatment of COVID- 19 with integrated Chinese and Western medicine (ICWM) Methods Retrieved were the papers published before Feb 26, 2020, which contained the diagnoses of COVID-19 with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and/or symptoms description of modern medicine in the academic exchange platform ( co-established by Ministry of Science and Technology, National Health Commission, China Association for Science and Technology, and China Medical Association) for novel coronavirus pneumonia research achievements and CNKI(novel coronavirus pneumonia OA) SPSS 17 0 was used to analyze the symptoms and other information extracted from these papers Results (1) From the perspective of modern medicine, the top 10 symptoms of COVID-19 were fever, cough, fatigue, expectoration, muscle pain, dry cough, chest distress, dyspnea, headache, and diarrhea, among which the frequencies of chest distress and dyspnea were higher in South China than in North China (P<0 05), while headache was less in North China (P<0 01) (2) From the perspective of TCM, the top 10 symptoms of COVID-19 were fever, cough, fatigue, muscle pain, poor appetite, expectoration, chest distress, dry mouth, aversion to cold, and headache, in which the frequencies of cough, dry cough, fatigue, muscle pain, expectoration, headache, chest distress, and diarrhea were higher in South China than in North China (P<0 05, P<0 01), while the incidence of pharyngeal pain was lower in South China than in North China (P<0 01) (3) From the perspective of two medicines, the top 10 symptoms of COVID-19 were fever, cough, fatigue, expectoration, muscle pain, chest distress, poor appetite, dry cough, dyspnea, and headache The frequencies of cough, chest distress, dyspnea, dry cough, and dyspnea were higher in South China than in North China (P<0 01), while the incidence of pharyngeal pain was lower in South China than in North China (P<0 01) (4) The frequencies of fever, dry cough, and dyspnea in the symptoms of COVID-19 from the perspective of TCM were lower than those of modern medicine (P<0 05, P<0 01), while the frequencies of fatigue, muscle pain, headache, chest distress, and poor appetite were higher than those of modern medicine (P<0 05, P<0 01) Conclusions (1) In addition to fever, cough, and fatigue as the main symptoms of COVID-19, muscle soreness may also be one of main symptoms (2) The characteristics of COVID-19 in North China and South China were almost the same, but there were also differences, and chest distress may be one of the symptoms reflecting this difference (3) From the perspective of modern medicine, the main symptoms of COVID-19, fever and dry cough occur more frequently than that of TCM To some extent, it showed that in its early stage the interventions of TCM and modern medicine may be slightly different (4) The first step to promote the integration of TCM and modern medicine is to standardize the identification and recording of symptoms in TCM and modern medicine, to promote the universality of symptoms description in TCM and modern medicine, and to achieve the consistency of symptoms collection in TCM and modern medicine