Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2003 Nov;8 Suppl(Suppl 1):S20-4.
doi: 10.1046/j.1440-1843.2003.00520.x.

SARS: clinical features and diagnosis

David Shu-Cheong Hui  1 , Poon-Chuen Wong, Chen Wang
Affiliations
Review

SARS: clinical features and diagnosis

David Shu-Cheong Hui et al. Respirology. 2003 Nov.

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a highly infectious disease with a significant morbidity and case fatality. The major clinical features include persistent fever, chills/rigor, myalgia, malaise, dry cough, headache and dyspnoea. Less common symptoms include sputum production, sore throat, coryza, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Older subjects may present with decrease in general well-being, poor feeding, fall/fracture and delirium, without the typical febrile response. Common laboratory features include lymphopenia with depletion of CD4 and CD8 lymphocytes, thrombocytopenia, prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time, elevated D-Dimer, elevated alanine transminases, lactate dehydrogenase and creatinine kinase. The constellation of compatible clinical and laboratory findings, together with the rather characteristic radiological features especially on HRCT and the lack of clinical response to broad-spectrum antibiotics, should quickly arouse suspicion of SARS. The positivity rates of urine, nasophargyngeal aspirate and stool specimen have been reported to be 42%, 68% and 97%, respectively, on day 14 of illness, whereas serology for confirmation may take 28 days to reach a detection rate above 90%. Recently, quantitative measurement of blood SARS CoV RNA with real-time RT-PCR technique has been developed with a detection rate of 80% as early as day 1 of hospital admission but the detection rates drop to 75% and 42% on day 7 and day 14, respectively.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. World Health Organization. Summary of SARS cases by country from November 1 2002–7 August 2003. [Cited 17 August, 2003.] Available from URL: http://www.who.int/csr/sars/country/2003-08-15/en/
    1. Donnelly CA, Ghani AV, Leung GM et al. Epidemiological determinants of spread of causal agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong. Lancet 2003; 361: 1761–6. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tsang KW, Ho PL, Ooi GC et al. A cluster of cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong. N. Engl. J. Med. 2003; 348: 1977–85. - PubMed
    1. Lee N, Hui DS, Wu A et al. A major outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong. N. Engl. J. Med. 2003; 348: 1986–94. - PubMed
    1. Hsu LY, Lee CC, Green JA et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome in Singapore: clinical features of index patient and initial contacts. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 2003; 9: 713–7. - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms