Delayed hospital admission and high-dose corticosteroids potentially prolong SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection duration of patients with COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with the infection of SARS-CoV-2 has become a serious pandemic worldwide. However, only few studies focused on risk factors of prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection among patients with COVID-19. We included 206 adult patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from two hospitals between 23 Jan and 1 April 2020. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis was used to screen out independent risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection. By multivariate binomial logistic regression analysis and Cox regression analysis, we further determined the associations between SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection and potential risk factors. All patients had two negative SARS-CoV-2 tests with 33 days of median duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection (interquartile range: 25.2-39 days). LASSO and binomial logistic regression analyses suggested that delayed hospital admission (adjusted OR = 3.70, 95% CI: 1.82-7.50), hypokalemia, and subpleural lesion (adjusted OR = 4.32, 95% CI: 1.10-16.97) were associated with prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection. By LASSO and multivariate Cox regression analyses, we observed that delayed hospital admission, subpleural lesion, and high-dose corticosteroid use were independent risk factors of prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection. Early hospital admission shortened 5.73 days of mean duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection than delayed hospital admission after adjusting confounding factors. Our study demonstrated that delayed hospital admission and subpleural lesion were associated with prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection among patients with COVID-19. The use of high-dose corticosteroids should be interpreted with extreme caution in treating COVID-19.

The value of clinical parameters in predicting the severity of COVID-19.

To study the relationship between clinical indexes and the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and to explore its role in predicting the severity of COVID-19. Clinical data of 443 patients with COVID-19 admitted to our hospital were retrospectively analyzed, which were divided into nonsevere group (n = 304) and severe group (n = 139) according to their condition. Clinical indicators were compared between different groups. The differences in sex, age, the proportion of patients with combined heart disease, leukocyte, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), neutrophil, lymphocyte, platelet, D-dimer, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin, lactate dehydrogenase, and albumin on admission between the two groups were statistically significant (P < .05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed NLR and CRP were independent risk factors for severe COVID-19. Platelets were independent protective factors for severe COVID-19. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis demonstrated area under the curve of NLR, platelet, CRP, and combination was 0.737, 0.634, 0.734, and 0.774, respectively. NLR, CRP, and platelets can effectively assess the severity of COVID-19, among which NLR is the best predictor of severe COVID-19, and the combination of three clinical indicators can further predict severe COVID-19.

Schisandrin B attenuates bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice through AKT-mTOR pathway.

PURPOSE: Schisandrin B (Sch B) is an active monomer of Schisandrin with anti-fibrosis pharmacological action. The study investigated whether Sch B alleviate bleomycin-induced (BLM-Induced) pulmonary fibrosis in mice and attempted to clarify its anti-fibrosis mechanism. METHODS: Histopathological examination was performed by H&E staining and immunohistochemistry. The inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress were determined by ELISA. Western blotting and immunofluorescence were used to investigate the possible molecular mechanism to attenuate pulmonary fibrosis by Sch B. RESULTS: The results indicated that Sch B can significantly attenuate BLM-Induced pulmonary fibrosis, myofibroblast activation, and collagen fibers deposition in mice. In addition, Sch B can inhibit inflammatory response and oxidative stress in early stage. Furthermore, Sch B can inhibit pulmonary fibrosis by promoting autophagy via promoting the dephosphorylation of AKT-mTOR pathway. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the anti-fibrotic effect of Sch B is potentially related to the activation of autophagy through AKT-mTOR pathway, and Sch B is a potential agent for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Chromosome Detection in Metaphase Cell Images Using Morphological Priors.

Reliable chromosome detection in metaphase cell (MC) images can greatly alleviate the workload of cytogeneticists for karyotype analysis and the diagnosis of chromosomal disorders. However, it is still an extremely challenging task due to the complicated characteristics of chromosomes, e.g., dense distributions, arbitrary orientations, and various morphologies. In this article, we propose a novel rotated-anchor-based detection framework, named DeepCHM, for fast and accurate chromosome detection in MC images. Our framework has three main innovations: 1) A deep saliency map representing chromosomal morphological features is learned end-to-end with semantic features. This not only enhances the feature representations for anchor classification and regression but also guides the anchor setting to significantly reduce redundant anchors. This accelerates the detection and improves the performance; 2) A hardness-aware loss weights the contribution of positive anchors, which effectively reinforces the model to identify hard chromosomes; 3) A model-driven sampling strategy addresses the anchor imbalance issue by adaptively selecting hard negative anchors for model training. In addition, a large-scale benchmark dataset with a total of 624 images and 27,763 chromosome instances was built for chromosome detection and segmentation. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms most state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches and successfully handles chromosome detection, with an AP score of 93.53%.

Detection of Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles and Novel Recombinant Strain of Lumpy Skin Disease Virus Causes High Mortality in Yaks.

Lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) is capable of causing transboundary diseases characterized by fever, nodules on the skin, mucous membranes, and inner organs. The disease may cause emaciation with the enlargement of lymph nodes and sometimes death. It has had endemic importance in various parts of Asia in recent years, causing substantial economic losses to the cattle industry. The current study reported a suspected LSDV infection (based on signs and symptoms) from a mixed farm of yak and cattle in Sichuan Province, China. The clinical samples were found positive for LSDV using qPCR and ELISA, while LSDV DNA was detected in Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles. The complete genome sequence of China/LSDV/SiC/2021 was determined by Next-generation sequencing. It was found that China/LSDV/SiC/2021 is highly homologous to the novel vaccine-related recombinant LSDV currently emerging in China and countries surrounding China. Phylogenetic tree analysis revealed that the novel vaccine-associated recombinant LSDV formed a unique dendrograms topology between field and vaccine-associated strains. China/LSDV/SiC/2021 was found to be a novel recombinant strain, with at least 18 recombination events via field viruses identified in the genome sequence. These results suggest that recombinant LSDV can cause high mortality in yaks, and its transmission might be due to the Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, which acts as a mechanical vector.

Differential expression of miRNAs in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and plasma from patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Micro RNAs (MiRNAs) act as a key regulator participating in various biological process, and the roles of that play in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are discovered. However, recent pharmacological treatment for COPD focus on alleviating symptoms and reducing the risk events. The heterogeneous COPD causes variable responses to pharmacological interventions. COPD treatment has gradually developed into precision medicine, integrating clinical and biomarker information to optimize personalized therapy. Thus, targeting miRNAs represents a promising strategy for COPD individual therapy. Twelve COPD patients, 7 community-acquired pneumonia and 4 normal people were recruited. Total RNAs were collected from the bronch alveolar lavage cells and peripheral blood plasma of each participant. miRNAs were profiled by microarray and systematically compared between patients with different groups. Bioinformatic analysis identified pathways relevant to the pathogenesis of COPD. Next, the target pathway networks were mapped. Compared different groups, we obtain differential expression of miRNAs (Q value (Adjusted P value) < .05 and |log2FC| >2). Gene ontology enrichment analyses showed that differentially expressed miRNAs function as regulators in different modules of cellular component, molecular function and biological process. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analyses suggested that signals, such as MAPK signaling pathway, Ras signaling pathway, FoxO signaling pathway and oxidative stress may participate in the pathogenesis of COPD. In the miRNAs target pathway networks, novel-hsa-miR26-3p or hsa-miR-3529-3p/CDC42/MAPK signaling pathway may play a role in regulating COPD. Our findings demonstrate critical roles of the miRNAs in COPD molecular pathology. The data support a plausible mechanism that miRNAs may be involved in the development of COPD by affecting the inflammatory and oxidative stress. Moreover, hsa-miR-4748/CDC42/MAPK signaling pathway may contribute to the pathogenesis of COPD, providing a potential novel therapeutic strategy in COPD.

Serum vascular endothelial growth factor levels in patients with non-small cell lung cancer and its relations to the micrometastasis in peripheral blood.

To examine the relationship between the levels of the serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the micrometastasis of peripheral blood in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), 108 NSCLC patients, including 40 patients with benign lung diseases and 30 healthy controls, were investigated. The serum VEGF levels were detected by ELISA and CK19 mRNA in peripheral blood by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). In NSCLC group, the serum VEGF levels and the positive rate of CK19 mRNA in peripheral blood were 479.8+/-268.5 pg/mL and 66.7%, which were significantly higher than those of the other two groups respectively (P<0.01), and both of them were increased significantly with the progression of clinical stage of the tumors (P<0.01). Serum VEGF levels as well as the positive rate of CK19 mRNA in different pathological types of lung cancer had no significant differences (P>0.05). Serum VEGF levels in the patients positive for CK19 mRNA was 561.7+/-325.6 pg/mL. It is significantly higher than that in the negative patients (P<0.01). There existed a significant correlation between serum VEGF levels and expression of CK19 mRNA in peripheral blood in NSCLC patients (P<0.001). The detection of serum VEGF levels and CK19 mRNA in peripheral blood is helpful in judging the condition and the prognosis of NSCLC patients, and serum VEGF levels and CK19 mRNA are independent of the pathological types of lung cancer. The micrometastasis in peripheral blood of NSCLC patients is significantly associated with serum VEGF levels.

Vascular endothelial growth factor promotes the expression of cyclooxygenase 2 and matrix metalloproteinases in Lewis lung carcinoma cells.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a critical role in tumor progression, angiogenesis and metastasis. Cyclooxygenase (COX)-2, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)2, MMP9 and wild-type (WT) p53 has been found to regulate the production of VEGF. Whether VEGF regulates the production of COX-2, MMP2, MMP9 and WTp53, however, has yet to be determined. This study examined the influence of the overexpression or knockdown of VEGF on the protein levels of COX-2, MMP2, MMP9 and WTp53 as well as cell growth and cell cycle progression in Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) cells. LLC cells were transfected with pIRES2-VEGF-GFP in the VEGF-overexpressing group (LLC-VEGF), pIRES2-GFP in the mock group (LLC-GFP) or pSUPER-VEGF-GFP in the VEGF knockdown group (LLC-RNAi). Protein levels were detected by western blot analysis. LLC cell growth exhibited no marked change in the LLC-VEGF group, but was significantly retarded in the LLC-RNAi group. Further examination revealed that more cells entered the S stage in the LLC-VEGF group than in the control (or mock) group (45.3 vs. 29.1%, P<0.05), and that cell growth was retarded in the LLC-RNAi group. Moreover, COX-2 and MMP2 and MMP9 proteins were significantly increased in the LLC-VEGF group (approximately 1.84-, 1.89- and 1.83-fold, respectively, vs. control, P<0.05), but significantly decreased in the LLC-RNAi group, whereas the expression of WTp53 exhibited the opposite pattern of change. VEGF expression was positively correlated with COX-2, MMP2 and MMP9 expression (r=0.984, r=0.978, r=0.969, respectively, P<0.01) and negatively correlated with WTp53 (r=-0.833, p<0.01). The activities of MMP2 and MMP9 were increased in the LLC-VEGF group. In conclusion, VEGF overexpression may promote the expression of COX-2 and MMPs, but inhibits WTp53 production in LLC cells; VEGF underexpression may have an inverse effect. These changes are closely correlated with the infiltration and metastasis of lung cancer.