key: cord-0840457-7u6tdenk authors: Zayet, Souheil; N'dri Juliette, Kadiane‐Oussou; Royer, Pierre‐Yves; Toko, Lynda; Gendrin, Vincent; Klopfenstein, Timothee title: Coronavirus disease 2019: new things to know! date: 2020-04-13 journal: J Med Virol DOI: 10.1002/jmv.25874 sha: 991aa431678e06eed1c6719debb62c8f1080f087 doc_id: 840457 cord_uid: 7u6tdenk We have read with interest the review of Feng et al. “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19): What we know?” 1 which report the clinical features, diagnosis and treatment of the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. In this review, the median age in the different studies ranging from 49 to 59 years, and more than half of patients were men. Nearly half of cases had one or more comorbidities, such as hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The main symptoms included fever, fatigue, dry cough, myalgia, and dyspnea. The uncommon symptoms included sputum production, headache, hemoptysis, and diarrhea. No otorhinolaryngological symptoms were described. We conducted a study with COVID-19 patients resulting in similar findings; we emphasize that the most common symptoms are similar, but with a few other symptoms which are not reported by Feng et al. We conducted a retrospective study in the Nord Franche-Comté Hospital since a major French cluster of COVID-19 began on March, 1 st 2020 in Mulhouse city (less than 30 miles from our hospital). Between This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. March, 1 st and March, 13 th 2020, we report the data about 62 patients infected with In comparison to the review of Feng et al. the main symptoms are similar: fever, fatigue, cough and myalgia. However, headache (three quarters of patients) and diarrhea (more than a third of patients) was more often notice in our study. Our main point is that anosmia and dysgeusia were present in half of the patients. To our knowledge, these otorhinolaryngological symptoms have never been described in COVID-19 beforehand. The influenza like illness (ILI) is nonspecific; however, anosmia and dysgeusia are not described associated with influenza 3,4 . Patient with ILI associated with anosmia and/or dysgeusia should lead clinicians to suspect a COVID-19. We wonder if there was invasion of the olfactory receptors or damage of the first cranial nerves in the nasal cavity cell membrane and/or central lesion; as described in post viral olfactory loss with other viruses 5,6 . As noticed above, 78% of our patients Coronavirus disease 2019: What we know Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR Influenza and Viral Pneumonia Olfactory mucosal findings and clinical course in patients with olfactory disorders following upper respiratory viral infection Central presentation of postviral olfactory loss evaluated by positron emission tomography scan: a pilot study An alteration of the dopamine synthetic pathway is possibly involved in the pathophysiology of COVID-19 The neuroinvasive potential of SARS-CoV2 may play a role in the respiratory failure of COVID-19 patients The neuroinvasive potential of SARS-CoV-2 may play a role in the respiratory failure of COVID-19 patients Contributors SZ, TK and JNKO collected the epidemiological and clinical data and processed statistical data. SZ and TK drafted the manuscript. LT, PYR and VG revised the final manuscript. All authors declare no competing interests. We thank all patients involved in the study and especially Dr Zahra Hajer for her help.