Factors associated with SARS-COV-2 positive test in Lifelines

Grigory Sidorenkov; Judith M Vonk; Marco Grzegorczyk; Francisco O Cortés-Ibañez; Geertruida H de Bock

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0294556

Factors associated with SARS-COV-2 positive test in Lifelines

PLoS One. 2023 Nov 29;18(11):e0294556. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294556. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Grigory Sidorenkov¹, Judith M Vonk¹, Marco Grzegorczyk², Francisco O Cortés-Ibañez¹, Geertruida H de Bock¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
² Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen-Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Groningen, Netherlands.

Abstract

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-COV-2) can affect anyone, however, it is often mixed with other respiratory diseases. This study aimed to identify the factors associated with SARS-COV-2 positive test.

Methods: Participants from the Northern Netherlands representative of the general population were included if filled in the questionnaire about well-being between June 2020-April 2021 and were tested for SARS-COV-2. The outcome was a self-reported test as measured by polymerase chain reaction. The data were collected on age, sex, household, smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, quality of life, fatigue, symptoms and medications use. Participants were matched on sex, age and the timing of their SARS-COV-2 tests maintaining a 1:4 ratio and classified into those with a positive and negative SARS-COV-2 using logistic regression. The performance of the model was compared with other machine-learning algorithms by the area under the receiving operating curve.

Results: 2564 (20%) of 12786 participants had a positive SARS-COV-2 test. The factors associated with a higher risk of SARS-COV-2 positive test in multivariate logistic regression were: contact with someone tested positive for SARS-COV-2, ≥1 household members, typical SARS-COV-2 symptoms, male gender and fatigue. The factors associated with a lower risk of SARS-COV-2 positive test were higher quality of life, inhaler use, runny nose, lower back pain, diarrhea, pain when breathing, sore throat, pain in neck, shoulder or arm, numbness or tingling, and stomach pain. The performance of the logistic models was comparable with that of random forest, support vector machine and gradient boosting machine.

Conclusions: Having a contact with someone tested positive for SARS-COV-2 and living in a household with someone else are the most important factors related to a positive SARS-COV-2 test. The loss of smell or taste is the most prominent symptom associated with a positive test. Symptoms like runny nose, pain when breathing, sore throat are more likely to be indicative of other conditions.

Copyright: © 2023 Sidorenkov et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / diagnosis
Humans
Male
Pain
Pharyngitis*
Quality of Life
Rhinorrhea
SARS-CoV-2

Grants and funding

The study was funded by the Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The study used the data of The Lifelines Initiative. The Lifelines initiative has been made possible by subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), Groningen University and the Provinces in the North of the Netherlands (Drenthe, Friesland, Groningen).