Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients with Middle East Respiratory syndrome Coronavirus in Iran in 2014

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The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was a great global concern in 2014. It has a wide range of manifestations that may differ in each area and also high mortality. In this study, we reported epidemiological characteristics, history, clinical and Paraclinical information of all five patients with laboratory-confirmed MERS-CoV from Iran. All these patients were from Kerman province. None of them had a history of travel, contact with animals or consumption of camel milk products but all of them had some sort of contact with a person who had been in Saudi-Arabia and experienced respiratory infection. One of the five patients was male and two of them passed away from the disease. Fever and respiratory symptoms were the most common symptoms and two patients had watery diarrhea. There were alveolar pattern in all available CXR’s and elevated liver aminotransferases in three patients. Two of them had leucopenia and none of them had renal failure. In conclusion, we insist that all patients with acute respiratory symptoms, who had contact with a person that had recently traveled to Saudi-Arabia and experienced respiratory infection, should be investigated for MERS-CoV.