Follow-up study on serum cholesterol profiles and potential sequelae in recovered COVID-19 patients

BMC Infectious Diseases

Table 3 Effects of TCHMs on lipid profiles of follow-up COVID-19 patients

Laboratory values (mg/dL)	COVID-19 follow-up patients
	Mild group (59)						Severe/Critical group (48)
	Non-TCHM (25)			TCHM (34)			Non-TCHM (31)			TCHM (17)
	Adm	Flw	p	Adm	Flw	p	Adm	Flw	p	Adm	Flw	p
No cholesterol-lowering drugs (n)	N = 17			N = 33			N = 24			N = 17
LDL-c	97.8 (90.3, 113.5)	103.5 (89.6, 115.9)	0.211	101.3 (84.6, 113.3)	101.7 (87.0, 120.3)	0.136	90.9 (74.3, 113.5)	102.1 (81.6, 124.1)	*0.011*	101.3 (79.1, 108.7)	112.9 (99.4, 129.7)	0.089
HDL-c	50.3 (44.1, 64.5)	51.3 (46.2, 65.9)	0.478	57.6 (49.5, 65.4)	57.2 (46.8, 65.0)	0.868	50.1 (41.3, 59.7)	57.0 (47.0, 66.6)	*0.001*	51.8 (46.2, 72.3)	51.0 (44.8, 61.7)	0.169
Non-HDL-c	138.6 (125.9, 171.5)	145.8 (126.0, 173.5)	0.198	144.2 (115.6, 158.9)	153.5 (124.9, 165.9)	0.040	122.0 (88.3, 168.7)	152.0 (118.3, 186.8)	0.015	139.2 (114.7, 154.5)	162.0 (144.2, 203.9)	0.058
With cholesterol-lowering drugs (n)	N = 8			N = 1			N = 7			N = 0
With cholesterol-lowering drugs (n)	32%	32%		3%	3%	0.003*	29%	29%		0	0	0.033*

TCHMs traditional Chinese herbal medications, Adm admission, Flw follow-up, non-TCHM patients did not receive any traditional Chinese herbal medications, TCHM patients received any types of traditional Chinese herbal medications during the illness or / and recovery. Data are presented as median (IQR), n, or %. The p value is calculated using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test (two-sided) to compare variables at the times of admission with follow-up from the same subjects within subgroups. In both mild and severe groups, the lipid values at the time of admission or follow-up in the non-TCHM subgroup is compared with that in the TCHM subgroup using a Mann-Whitney U test; the p values are not shown since no statistical significance is found. *Fisher extract test is used. A total of 16 patients (n = 9 in mild and n = 7 in severe/critical cases) who had cholesterol-lowering drugs were excluded from the inter-subgroup analyses above

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