The aim: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the clinical and laboratory features of COVID-19 pneumonia course, the diagnostic significance of laboratory methods for detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus based on a retrospective analysis.
Materials and methods: We studied the case histories of 96 patients who were treated at the Municipal Non-Profit Enterprise “Lviv Clinical Emergency Care Hospital” for the period from 01/07/2020 to 31/07/2020 with a diagnosis of pneumonia, which corresponded to 5 points on the CO -RADS scale. We analyzed the clinical and laboratory signs of COVID-19 pneumonia depending on the results of the Quantitative Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) tests to the SARS-CoV-2 infection (positive result of RT-qPCR was observed in the first group and negative – in the second group).
Results: In both groups, no clinical differences in the course of the disease were found. The most common symptoms of coronavirus pneumonia were found with the same frequency in both patients with a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis and without it. A positive PCR test in nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs was more often detected during testing up to 10 days, in patients over 60 years of age and in severe COVID-19.
Conclusions: The COVID-19 pneumonia diagnosis should be based on a combination of clinical, laboratory, and radiological signs of this disease. A negative PCR test result does not exclude the diagnosis of coronavirus disease. The test results are influenced by the timing of the sampling, the severity of the disease and the age of the patients

UDC 616.12-008.331.1:616.379-008.64:616.988:578.834

The aim of this study was to assess the level of nitric oxide production and arginase activity in patients with arterial hypertension and type II diabetes mellitus during infection with SARS-CoV-2. The study groupsvincluded patients with arterial hypertension, patients with arterial hypertension combined with a severe course of COVID-19 and patients who, in addition to arterial hypertension and COVID-19, were suffering from type II diabetes mellitus. The volunteers without any clinical signs of diseases and normal blood pressure formed the control group. It has been established that arterial hypertension, combined with COVID-19 occurs along with reduced L-arginine, nitric oxide, superoxide dismutase activity and increased arginase activity. At the same time, the presence of arterial hypertension in patients with diabetes and coronavirus disease is accom-panied by a decline in the content of L-arginine and arginase activity. Our study’s results may help scientists find new pharmacological targets in the future treatment of coronavirus disease and comorbid disorders.