Headache in patients with coronavirus disease (Covid-19): An integrative literature review

Abstract

Introduction
The disease caused by the new coronavirus was named by the acronym COVID-19 which means “COrona VIrus Disease”, while “19” refers to the year 2019, when the first cases in Wuhan, China, were identified.
Objective
Our objective was to identify the prevalence of headache and to know its clinical characteristics in COVID-19 patients, available in the literature.
Methods
Based on a literature search in the major medical databases and using the descriptors “headache and coronavirus”, “headache and 2019-nCoV”, “headache and SARS-CoV-2”, “headache and coronavirus and 2019-nCoV” and “headache and coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2” we include articles published between January 2019 and April 2020. We found 94 articles, but only 13 met the inclusion criteria.
Results
In 13 articles analyzed in this review, a total of 3,105 Chinese patients (51.6% men and 48.4% women) had laboratory diagnoses of COVID-19. In 240 (7.7%) patients, headache was an associated symptom of COVID-19, but in only 52 (21.7%) of them there was some information about the characteristics of this headache.
Conclusions
COVID-19 patients have several clinical manifestations, including headache that is nonspecific with a prevalence of 7.7%.