Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treatment of COVID-19 and Viral Disease: Efficacies and Clinical Evidence.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains an uncontained, worldwide pandemic. While battling the disease in China, the Chinese government has actively promoted the use of traditional Chinese medicine, and many studies have been conducted to determine the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine for treating COVID-19. The present review discusses the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese medicine in curing COVID-19 and provides clinical evidence from all confirmed cases in China. Applications of traditional Chinese medicine and specific recipes for treating other viral infections, such as those caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and influenza A viruses (including H1N1), are also discussed. Studies have reported that traditional Chinese medicine treatment plays a significant role in improving clinical symptoms. Therefore, further investigation may be of high translational value in revealing novel targeted therapies for COVID-19.

Metagenomic analysis of the inhibitory effect of chromium on microbial communities and removal efficiency in A2O sludge.

This is the first study exploring the effects of persistent Cr(VI) treatment on microbial communities and function as well as the process efficiency of an A2O system. The inhibitory effect was clearly higher at a high Cr(VI) concentration than a low Cr(VI) concentration, and different Cr(VI) concentrations had distinct effects on the microbial communities as well as on the performance efficiency of the system. Functional annotation analysis indicated that Cr(VI) stress inhibited most of the metabolic pathway and functional genes of the microbial communities, especially those involved in the denitrification pathway. Network analysis was used to investigate the co-occurrence patterns between denitrification genes and microbial taxa; the results indicated that microorganisms with functional genes had high diversity and were adversely affected by Cr(VI) exposure. This study is the first to establish a relationship between Cr(VI) stress and microbial communities and function as well as to determine the underlying mechanisms and roles of Cr(VI) in A2O sludge.

Effect of copper on the performance and bacterial communities of activated sludge using Illumina MiSeq platforms.

The anaerobic-anoxic-aerobic (A2O) process is a highly efficient sewage treatment method, which uses complex bacterial communities. However, the effect of copper on this process and the bacterial communities involved remains unknown. In this study, a systematic investigation of the effect of persistent exposure of copper in the A2O wastewater treatment system was performed. An A2O device was designed to examine the effect of copper on the removal efficiency and microbial community compositions of activated sludge that was continuously treated with 10, 20, and 40 mg L(-1) copper, respectively. Surprisingly, a decrease in chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (NH4N) removal efficiency was observed, and the toxicity of high copper concentration was significantly greater at 7d than at 1d. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Acidobacteria, Chlorobi, and Nitrospirae were the dominant bacterial taxa in the A2O system, and significant changes in microbial community were observed during the exposure period. Most of the dominant bacterial groups were easily susceptible to copper toxicity and diversely changed at different copper concentrations. However, not all the bacterial taxa were inhibited by copper treatment. At high copper concentration, many bacterial species were stimulated and their abundance increased. Cluster analysis and principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) revealed clear differences in the bacterial communities among the samples. These findings indicated that copper severely affected the performance and key microbial populations in the A2O system as well as disturbed the stability of the bacterial communities in the system, thus decreasing the removal efficiency.

[Planktonic Algae's Distribution and Correlation with Dissolved Organic Matters' Fluorescence in the End of the Three Gorges Reservoir's Back Water Zone].

For researching the community structure, composition, and distribution of the planktonic algae in the Three Gorges Reservoir (TRG), especially, within TRG water levels' fluctuating, mpacting to water quality with the algae's growing, 6 sampling cites in the end of the TGR's back water zone, from Chaotianmen to Taihonggang Town, are chosen to monitor, at the sensitive stages time of algal bloom between March to May 2012, namely, water levels lowing from the highest impounding. The community's structure, composition, and distribution of the planktonic algae in the TGR, and the correlation of water quality parameters and DOM's fluorescence features with algae density, are obtained. According to the experimental results, blue algae fibre, chlorella, melosira, navicula are the dominated algae in the end of the TGR's back water zone, from Chaotianmen to Taihonggang Town, algae density are 0.40~0.56 × 10(6), 1.9~0.8 × 10(6), 0.36~0.25 × 10(6), 0.42~0.15 × 10(6) cells · L(-1) respectively. Besides, anabaena, phormidium, cladophora, feather, ovate algae are existing in only limited 2 sections. The fitting results reveal obvious linear correlation of the EEM characteristics of DOM with the 4 kinds of dominated algal density, which could be useful conference for the algae bloom monitor, conveniently and effectively.