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    <front>
        <journal-meta>
            <journal-id journal-id-type="issn">0973-7510</journal-id>
            <journal-title-group>
                <journal-title>Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology</journal-title>
            </journal-title-group>
            <issn pub-type="epub">2581-690X</issn>
            <publisher>
                <publisher-name>DR. M.N. Khan</publisher-name>
            </publisher>
        </journal-meta>
        <article-meta>
            <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.22207/JPAM.18.1.51</article-id>
            <title-group>
                <article-title>Association of RT-qPCR Ct Values and Disease Severity among COVID-19 Patients Visiting a Tertiary Care Hospital in Nepal</article-title>
            </title-group>
            <contrib-group>
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Joshi</surname>
                        <given-names>Jagadish</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-1"/>
                </contrib>
				
						<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Joshi</surname>
                        <given-names>Om Prakash</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-1"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Kamar</surname>
                        <given-names>Sher Bahadur</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-2"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Awasthi</surname>
                        <given-names>Guna Raj</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-1"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Shah</surname>
                        <given-names>Yogendra</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-2"/>
					 <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-3"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Shahi</surname>
                        <given-names>Ramesh</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-2"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Khadka</surname>
                        <given-names>Sandip</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-3"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Joshi</surname>
                        <given-names>Hem Raj</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-1"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Padhaya</surname>
                        <given-names>Pushpa Raj</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-1"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Joshi</surname>
                        <given-names>Chet Raj</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-4"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Ojha</surname>
                        <given-names>Ram Prashad</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-3"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Singh</surname>
                        <given-names>Sunil Bahadur</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-3"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Bhatt</surname>
                        <given-names>Lok Raj</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-3"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Dhami</surname>
                        <given-names>Ram Singh</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-5"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Pandey</surname>
                        <given-names>Kishor</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-5"/>
					 <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-6"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Regmi</surname>
                        <given-names>Sudip</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-7"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Sapkota</surname>
                        <given-names>Sita Ram</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-8"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Pant</surname>
                        <given-names>Dhan Kumar</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-9"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Khadka</surname>
                        <given-names>Kamal Singh</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-5"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Dumre</surname>
                        <given-names>Shyam Prakash</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-10"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
				
				<contrib contrib-type="author">
                    <name>
                        <surname>Pandey</surname>
                        <given-names>Basu Dev</given-names>
                    </name>
                    <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-5"/>
					<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff-11"/>
                </contrib>
				
				
								            		
            </contrib-group>
			
			
          <aff id="aff-1">Health Directorate, Sudurpaschim Province, Rajpur, Doti, Nepal.</aff>
			 <aff id="aff-2">Seti Provincial Hospital, Dhangadhi, Kailali, Nepal.</aff>
			  <aff id="aff-3">Province Public Health Laboratory, Rajpur, Kailali, Nepal.</aff>
			   <aff id="aff-4">Ministry of Social Development, Sudurpaschim Province, Dhangadhi, Kailali, Nepal.</aff>
			    <aff id="aff-5">Everest International Clinic and Research Center, Kathmandu, Nepal.</aff>
				 <aff id="aff-6">Central Department of Zoology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.</aff>
				  <aff id="aff-7">Himalayan Essence Pvt. Ltd., Kathmandu, Nepal.</aff>
				   <aff id="aff-8">Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.</aff>
				    <aff id="aff-9">National One Health Alliance for Nepal, Tahachal, Kathmandu, Nepal.</aff>
					 <aff id="aff-10">Central Department of Microbiology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.</aff>
					  <aff id="aff-11">DEJIMA Infectious Disease Research Alliance, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan.</aff>
			 			
			
            <pub-date publication-format="electronic" date-type="pub" iso-8601-date="2024-03-02">
                <day>02</day>
				<month>03</month>
                <year>2024</year>
            </pub-date>
            <volume>18</volume>
            <issue>1</issue>
            <fpage>662</fpage>
            <lpage>671</lpage>
            <permissions>
                <copyright-statement>Copyright &#x00A9; 2024 The Author(s)</copyright-statement>
                <copyright-year>2024</copyright-year>
                <license license-type="open-access"
                    xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
                    <license-p>This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.<uri 
					xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
                            >https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</uri></license-p>
                </license>
            </permissions>
            <self-uri xlink:href="https://microbiologyjournal.org/association-of-rt-qpcr-ct-values-and-disease-severity-among-covid-19-patients-visiting-a-tertiary-care-hospital-in-nepal/"/>
            <abstract>
                <p>COVID-19 pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2 has been one of the major global health issues of this aeon.
The aim this study was to evaluate the association of SARS-CoV-2 cycle threshold (Ct) values with
multiple factors among COVID-19 patients visiting a tertiary care hospital in Sudurpashchim province
of Nepal. A retrospective analysis was performed on the data of randomly selected COVID-19 cases
among the total RT-qPCR tested patients from March 2020 to April 2022. The Ct values at the time
of patient admission and their clinical outcomes (discharge or death) were compared. Among the
COVID-19 patients, survivor group had significantly higher initial Ct value compared to non-survivors
[median Ct values 23.21 and 24.39 (P &lt; 0.0001)]. Selected haematological parameters; white blood
cells (P&lt;001), neutrophils (P&lt;001), and monocytes (P&lt;0.0001), and all the biochemical parameters
were significantly different between these two groups (p &lt; 0.005). Furthermore, significantly increased
CRP (61.54±63.00, P&lt;0.0017), D-dimer levels (0.8979± 1.480, P&lt;0.0001), creatinine (0.7931±0.2551,
P&lt;0.0001), monocytes (0.6782±0.7981, P&lt;0.0001), and random blood sugar (152.4±34.32, P&lt;0.0001)
were observed among non-survivors indicating as cause of disease severity in COVID-19. The findings
of this study imply that the Ct value, CRP and D-dimer levels could be a crucial marker for the early
detection of severe COVID-19 patients or those at higher risk of developing severe disease. This will
eventually help to identify cases requiring immediate and critical medical care and reduce mortality.</p>
		</abstract>
		<kwd-group>
        <title>Keywords</title>
        <kwd>SARS-CoV-2</kwd>
        <kwd>COVID-19</kwd>
		<kwd>RT-qPCR</kwd>
		<kwd>Cycle Threshold-Ct</kwd>
        <kwd>Disease Severity</kwd>
		<kwd>Severity Marker</kwd>
		<kwd>Nepal</kwd>
			</kwd-group>
        </article-meta>
    </front>
    </article>
