Progress and Perspective of Transmission Dynamics Models in Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases

The current respiratory infectious disease has expanded over the world, posing a serious threat to people's physical and mental health, as well as their lives. Science and technology immediately united to fight against such deadly infectious disease in the past 100 years. Mathematical models have proved invaluable to understand and help control infectious disease epidemics. By simplifying real world phenomena, these models describe, analyze, and predict disease transmission patterns, producing tractable solutions in the face of quickly changing situations. In this Chapter, we firstly summarized the history and development of the mathematical models in infectious diseases. Afterwards, the specific transmission dynamics models with different model structures used in fitting and forecasting the situation of the current respiratory infectious disease were introduced, aiming different analytical objectives including but not limited to parameter estimation, trend prediction and early warning, prevention and control measures effectiveness evaluation, and transmission uncertainty exploration. Summary in values of transmission dynamics models is followed to illustrate their contribution in understanding and combating infectious disease outbreaks. Despite their utility, however, mathematical models are facing several important challenges which, if ignored, would result in biased estimation of the crucial epidemiological parameters, bad fitting of the data, or misinterpretation of the results. In conclusion, mathematical modeling should be one of the most valuable tools to reflect such huge uncertainties or, on the other hand, warn of the worst situation. An appreciation of models' shortcomings not only clarifies why they cannot do but helps anticipate what they can. © People's Medical Publishing House, PR of China 2022.

Study on population behavior under home quarantine policies of COVID-19 in China based on double-layer network evolutionary games

In the practice of COVID-19 prevention and control in China, the home quarantine policy directly connects and manages the residents, which plays a significant role in preventing the spread of the epi-demic in the community. We evaluate the effectiveness of current home quarantine policy in the actual execution process based on the evolutionary game relationship between the community and res-idents. This paper establishes a double-layer coupled complex network game model, and uses the multi-agent modeling method to study the game relationship between the community and residents in the context of home quarantine policies. The results show that initial strategy of the community with strict supervision and reasonable government reward allocation will increase the proportion of the residents complying with the quarantine rule. When 80% of the communities chose to supervise strictly at the beginning, people are more likely to follow the rules. While when the residents can only get 20% of the government's reward, the proportion of choosing to violate the quarantine rules is much higher than that when they can get 80% of the reward. Besides, the structure of small-world network and environmental noise will also affect the residents' strategy. As the probability of reconnection of the small-world network rises from 0.2 to 0.8, the proportion of residents who choose to comply with the strategy becomes much higher. When the environmental noise reaches 0.5, the ratio of residents who choose to violate the strategy is higher than the ratio of complianc. The study is helpful to provide the basis for the government to formulate the quarantine policy and propose an optimization for making effective quarantine measures. In this way, the government can adjust the parameters to make residents achieve the possible level of compliance with quarantine policies as high as possible to contain the spread of the epidemic.

Mental health status of high school students impacted by COVID-19: A latest MSSMHS-60 investigation to 626 Dongguan high school students

As the normalization of the COVID-19 epidemic, trying to objectively present mental health status of high school students, to make comparisons with the history data for developing changes and to analyze how the epidemic been affected, the investigation has adopted stratified random sampling methods by randomly selected 5 classes from each grade of a Dongguan high School. Total 15 classes of 626 students participated and been evaluated by filling the questionnaire "Mental Health Scale for Middle School Students (MSSMHS-60)". 582 valid inputs were collected as the database, using SPSS 23.0 to carry out descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA with the relevant 2019 historical data from Chen Dan Beijing Youth Legal and Psychological Counseling Service Center for comparisons. The investigation and statistical results indicated: the overall mental health level of high school students have demonstrated an obvious negative trend during the COVID-19 epidemic, the latest problem detection rate 39.86% is much higher than 26.3% in 2019. Among all the factors, "Study Pressure", "Emotional Volatility"and "Anxiety"ranked the top three mental health problems. The mental health status of boys seems better than girls, while the mental health status of students in Grade One is better than students in Grade Three. The mental health status of students in Grade Three is the most critical, which manifested in serious problems on "Study pressure", "Anxiety"and "Emotional Fluctuation"factors. © 2022 IEEE.

Improving Robustness of Medical Image Diagnosis System by Using Multi-loss Hybrid Adversarial Function with Heuristic Projection

Medical image diagnosis system by using deep neural networks (DNN) can improve the sensitivity and speed of interpretation of chest CT for COVID-19 screening. However, DNN based medical image diagnosis is known to be influenced by the adversarial perturbations. In order to improve the robustness of medical image diagnosis system, this paper proposes an adversarial attack training method by using multi-loss hybrid adversarial function with heuristic projection. Firstly, the effective adversarial attacks which contain the noise style that can puzzle the network are created with a multi-loss hybrid adversarial function (MLAdv). Then, instead of adding these adversarial attacks to the training data directly, we consider the similarity between the original samples and adversarial attacks by using an adjacent loss during the training process, which can improve the robustness and the generalization of the network for unanticipated noise perturbations. Experiments are finished on COVID-19 dataset. The average attack success rate of this method for three DNN based medical image diagnosis systems is 63.9%, indicating that the created adversarial attack has strong attack transferability and can puzzle the network effectively. In addition, with the adversarial attack training, the augmented networks by using adversarial attacks can improve the diagnosis accuracy by 4.75%. Therefore, the augmented network based on MLAdv adversarial attacks can improve the robustness of medical image diagnosis system. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Satellite-based estimates of daily NO2 exposure in urban agglomerations of China and application to spatio-temporal characteristics of hotspots

The analysis of the daily spatial patterns of near-surface Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations can assist decision makers mitigate this common air pollutant in urban areas. However, comparative analysis of NO2 estimates in different urban agglomerations of China is limited. In this study, a new linear mixed effect model (LME) with multi-source spatiotemporal data is proposed to estimate daily NO2 concentrations at high accuracy based on the land-use regression (LUR) model and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) products. In addition, three models for NO2 concentration estimation were evaluated and compared in four Chinese urban agglomerations from 2018 to 2020, including the COVID-19 closed management period. Each model included a unique combination of methods and satellite NO2 products: ModelⅠ: LUR model with OMI products;Model Ⅱ: LUR model with TropOMI products;Model Ⅱ: LME model with TropOMI products. The results show that the LME model outperformed the LUR model in all four urban agglomerations as the average RMSE decreased by 16.09% due to the consideration of atmospheric dispersion random effects, and using TropOMI instead of OMI products can improve the accuracy. Based on our NO2 estimations, pollution hotspots were identified, and pollution anomalies during the COVID-19 period were explored for two periods;the lockdown and revenge pollution periods. The largest NO2 pollution difference between the hotspot and non-hotspot areas occurred in the second period, especially in the heavy industrial urban agglomerations. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Network Amplification of Politicized Information and Misinformation about COVID-19 by Conservative Media and Partisan Influencers on Twitter

Social media amplification is both a mechanism to attract public attention and a process of information diffusion shaped by the online social network structure. This study focuses on amplification by elites on social media and examines the extent to which traditional media and emerging partisan influencers engage in "network amplification.” Defined as like-minded elites sharing similar or/and mutual messages, network amplification highlights the interrelation and interaction between elite messages in the network communication environment of social media. This is a phenomenon worth investigating because network amplification's resulting message repetition and reinforcement can multiply the overall effectiveness of elite messaging. Using network sampling and spectral clustering, we collected 358,707 accounts that followed 2,069,311 accounts on Twitter and detected nine distinct networks of traditional media and emerging partisan influencers. We then examined their 3,540,629 tweets related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that 1) conservative media and influencers engaged in network amplification of politicized information and misinformation significantly more than liberal media and influencers did;2) conservative influencers exhibited a stronger tendency to retweet and align their messages with conservative media than liberal influencers did regarding liberal media;and 3) traditional media partially drove partisan influencers' amplification. The implications of network amplification for partisan asymmetry, misinformation, and public opinion are discussed. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Antioxidating and reinforcing effect of polydopamine functionalized silica on natural rubber latex films

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the demand for natural latex products with increased mechanical properties and aging resistance has surged. Based on the excellent adhesion and antioxidant properties of polydopamine (PDA), we employed a one-pot method to modify the surface of silica substrates using PDA containing a polyphenol structure, to prepare a reinforced silica-PDA composite latex material with antioxidant properties. As expected, the silica-PDA composite achieved both uniform dispersion and good interfacial interactions with natural rubber latex (NRL). In addition, compared with common NRL/silica films, the mechanical properties of the NRL/silica-PDA film were significantly improved;specifically, silica-PDA can highly-enhanced the mechanical property of NRL film from 24.94 to 32.18 MPa of tensile strength. Further, the antioxidant activity of the silica-PDA film exceeded that of commercially available antioxidant D. Considering the notable performance boost of silica-PDA composites on NRL films, we believe that the treatment of silica with natural polyphenols offers a convenient and facile new route for the preparation of environmentally friendly multifunctional silica additives. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Robots or humans for disaster response? Impact on consumer prosociality and possible explanations

Hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, and other disasters have taken millions of lives in the past few years and caused substantial economic losses. To tackle these extraordinary circumstances, governments, organizations, and companies seek assistance from both humans and high-technology machines such as robots. This research report documents how highlighting robots' (vs. humans') helping behaviors in disaster response can affect consumers' prosociality, explores driving mechanisms, and tests solutions. Study 1 found that consumers donated fewer items of clothing after watching news highlighting robots' (vs. humans') assistance in a mudslide disaster. Featuring the COVID-19 pandemic, Study 2 further showed that this decrease in prosociality occurred because reading about robots' assistance felt less encouraging/inspiring to consumers. Studies 3A-3C (and a supplemental study) explored multiple mechanisms and identified a key driver for the backfire effect—a lower perception of courage in disaster response robots. Accordingly, Study 4 tested three theory-driven solutions to raise the perceived courage in robots to increase consumer prosociality. © 2022 Society for Consumer Psychology.

Euler iteration augmented physics-informed neural networks for time-varying parameter estimation of the epidemic compartmental model

Introduction: Differential equations governed compartmental models are known for their ability to simulate epidemiological dynamics and provide highly accurate descriptive and predictive results. However, identifying the corresponding parameters of flow from one compartment to another in these models remains a challenging task. These parameters change over time due to the effect of interventions, virus variation and so on, thus time-varying compartmental models are required to reflect the dynamics of the epidemic and provide plausible results.Methods: In this paper, we propose an Euler iteration augmented physics-informed neural networks(called Euler-PINNs) to optimally integrates real-world reported data, epidemic laws and deep neural networks to capture the dynamics of COVID-19. The proposed Euler-PINNs method integrates the differential equations into deep neural networks by discretizing the compartmental model with suitable time-step and expressing the desired parameters as neural networks. We then define a robust and concise loss of the predicted data and the observed data for the epidemic in question and try to minimize it. In addition, a novel activation function based on Fourier theory is introduced for the Euler-PINNs method, which can deal with the inherently stochastic and noisy real-world data, leading to enhanced model performance.Results and Discussion: Furthermore, we verify the effectiveness of the Euler-PINNs method on 2020 COVID-19-related data in Minnesota, the United States, both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the simulation results demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency. Finally, we also perform predictions based on data from the early stages of the outbreak, and the experimental results demonstrate that the Euler-PINNs method remains robust on small dataset.

Balancing treatment of COVID-19 with diabetes

The COVID-19 virus is a rapidly spreading epidemic that threatens the world. Since its discovery, there have been fewer studies on the combination of COVID-19 and diabetes, and the complications of COVID-19 are closely related to diabetes. The findings showed that diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol levels were significantly associated with the severity of COVID-19, i.e. people with diabetes were more likely to contract COVID-19, especially those with severe acute respiratory distress. This comorbidity has been studied to be associated with compromised innate immunity and excessive proinflammatory cytokine responses involving IL-6 and TNF-α in uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (DM). The condition worsens if there are other comorbidities, such as high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, or coronary artery disease. These comorbidities often coexist with diabetes and are associated with more aggressive COVID-19 infections. This is because the most common complications of the new coronavirus are renal tubular necrosis and pancreatic islet B cell damage, so the treatment and prognosis of diabetes can also cause adverse reactions and worsen the condition of diabetic patients to a certain extent. A search of relevant literature and studies shows that, when treating patients with the disease, medical staff should implement early and aggressive management of diabetes to prevent adverse outcomes. In conclusion, the novel coronavirus worsens diabetes, and elevated blood sugar worsens pneumonia. Therefore, the control of diabetes and its complications should be prioritized for patients with pneumonia complicated by novel coronavirus infection, and then the disease caused by COVID-19 should be controlled and treated. © 2022 SPIE. All rights reserved.

A novel nonparametric mixture model for the detection pattern of COVID-19 on Diamond Princess cruise

The outbreak of COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship has attracted much attention. Motivated by the PCR testing data on the Diamond Princess, we propose a novel cure mixture nonparametric model to investigate the detection pattern. It combines a logistic regression for the probability of susceptible subjects with a nonparametric distribution for the detection of infected individuals. Maximum likelihood estimators are proposed. The resulting estimators are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed approach is appropriate for practical use. Finally, we apply the proposed method to PCR testing data on the Diamond Princess to show its practical utility.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Road Traffic Accidents: A Case Study of Severely affected City in China

People's travel has changed greatly under the impact of COVID-19. However, it is controversial that whether traffic restrictions of COVID-19 have a positive or negative impact on traffic accidents. At present, there are few studies on the variations of traffic accidents under the impact of COVID-19 in China, and quantitative analysis is rare. Therefore, this study explores the traffic accidents characteristics of W city seriously affected COVID-19. Based on wavelet transform, traffic accident prediction model is established using property damage only accidents data to predict accident frequency without the impact of COVID-19. Compared with the actual traffic accidents frequency, this paper quantitatively analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on traffic accident. The results show that traffic accidents show a trend of decline-bottom-recovery;the frequency of accidents after the recovery is more than the previous year's level;compared with other periods in 2020, the proportion of injury accidents increased sharply during the period when traffic restrictions were gradually loose. The result of accident prediction shows that BP neural network has the best prediction effect. After the implementation of traffic restrictions, the frequency of accidents shows three stages: rapid decline, bottom and continuous rise. In the three stages, the frequency of property damage only accidents decreased by 379.06, 654.72 and 288.19 per day on average. © 2022 IEEE.

Analysis on parents'willingness and factors to inoculate COVID-19 vaccine

Objective To understand the willingness and factors of children's parents for COVID- 19 inoculation,and to provide the basis for the formulation of COVID- 19 inoculation strategy. Methods Easy sampling was used to conduct questionnaire survey on parents of 215 children from a Grade AAA hospital in Wuhan between December 2020 and January 2021. Results One hundred and fifteen valid questionnaires were collected, and 96.74% of parents had heard of COVID- 19 before this survey. WeChat accounts 43.72%(94/215) and Tiktok accounts 28.37%(61/215) were main sources of COVID- 19 and vaccine- related knowledge. 90.23%(194/215) of the parents of children were willing to be inoculated against COVID- 19, and 9.77%(21/215) of children’s parents weren’ t willing to be inoculated against COVID -19 vaccine, mainly because they believed that the interval between the development and use of the vaccine was short,the necessity of time spending in considering(38.10%, 8/21),concerns about adverse effects and safety(47.62%,10/21). Parents of children with a bachelor's degree(OR=0.034,95% CTJO.002-0.582) and a monthly income of 5 000 to 7 999 Yuan(OR=11.459,95%CI-1.708-76.870) were more likely to inoculate COVID- 19 vaccine. Conclusion Parents of children have high willingness to inoculate COVID- 19 vaccines, while they show concerns about adverse reactions and safety of vaccines. The authorities concerned are recommended to strengthen the publicity of inoculation knowledge of COVID- 19 to thereby ease public doubts and ensure safe and effective promotion of vaccines. © 2022, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.

Time phased scheduling and Disease grading management to achieve efficient rescue of batches of COVID-19 infected patients in shelter hospital

Objective To introduce how to quickly set up a doctor team to achieve efficient treatment of batchs COVID-19 patients in Changchun GongTi shelter hospital. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted to analyze the basic situation of the doctors who supported the Changchun Gongti shelter hospital. The workload is the total number of patients from April 3 to 28, 2022. At the beginning of the task, the first week and the third week of the task, the five point scoring method was used to reflect the doctor's physical and mental state, stress state and rescue achievement. The time phased scheduling and disease grading management were fully implemented after 10 days of operation in the shelter. The doctors' ward round efficiency and self scoring changes before and after the implementation of the plan were compared, and the rescue results were summarized. Results Total of 56 doctors (the Sichuan medical assistance team to Changchun), who undertook the work of Changchun Gongti shelter Hospital, came from 12 professional departments of 14 hospitals. By internal and external linkage-time phased scheduling and information-based patient zoning and grading management, the admission time of batch patients was shortened from (14.64±10.09) min to (6.80±5.10) min per person(P<0.05), the number of patients that each doctor can view per hour ranges from (28.50±12.26) to (68.43±19.95) (P<0.01). A total of 1 293 patients were treated. There were no deaths, no accidents and no mild illness to severe illness in shelter hospital. 35 doctors completed a continuous survey. Before and after the implementation of those measures, the average physical state scores and the psychological state scores of doctors improved (P=0.03), the self-score of stress feeling decreased (P<0.01), and the self-score of professional achievement increased (P<0.01). Conclusions To adapt to the characteristics of emergency treatment for batch COVID-19 patients, the internal and external linkage-time phased scheduling and information-based patient zoning and grading management could help the temporarily convened doctors deal with a large number of patients efficiently, reduce work stress and exposure risk in shelter hospital. © 2022 Chinese Medical Association. All rights reserved.

Performing race and remaking identity: Chinese visual artists in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic

The mass shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people including six Asian women in March 2021 marked the new peak of the unceasing waves of anti-Asian violence since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. In this context, this article examines how a group of Chinese visual artists in New York perform and remake their Asian identity on social media in response to a surge in hatred towards and violence against Asians in the United States following the outbreak of COVID-19. Based on my analysis of their visual rhetoric and media activism, I identify three approaches that this group of Chinese visual artists use to perform and remake their Asian identity. First, they performed their Asian identity by developing vari-ous visual rhetorics to combat and denounce anti-Asian discourse and hate crime. Second, their Asian identity emerged when they created new visual rhetoric to reimagine what it meant to be Asian in the United States. The new visual rhetoric enriched the understanding of Asian-ness and diversified the experiences of being Asian in the United States by overtly or subtly challenging Asian stereotypes as a product of the western imagination. Lastly, they claimed their Asian identity through seeking racial justice in a larger social context in collaboration with other racial minority groups. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article.

Soil Moisture Active Passive: Flying A Spacecraft From Home

During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft was flown almost entirely from the homes of operations personnel. SMAP is a science spacecraft mission, measuring soil moisture, its freeze/thaw state, and other parameters on a global scale to support weather forecasting, disaster response and climate research. Institutional pandemic response protocols at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) prescribed that only mission critical and mission essential work may be performed on-site. Fortuitously, automation is a defining characteristic of SMAP operations. Ground systems are used to automate routine tasks but not to replace or replicate the technical expertise of human operators. Nominal operations are repetitive, occur around the clock, and automation allows them to be low cost. Potential contingency scenarios were assessed. Consequences of lost or degraded capability of major mission system elements were evaluated. In particular, the impacts of progressively reduced availability of ground antenna stations were considered. Operational adjustments were made to conduct nearly all functions remotely. Naturally, all meetings were conducted online, and chat rooms were set up. For the infrequent real-time operations, an uplink team of two was deployed to the mission ops center, and all other participants remotely monitored the telemetry and systems. The project policy that all manual uplinks must be performed on-site by two persons was retained. Maneuvers, normally performed on-site with support from several system and sub-system operators, were now performed completely remotely by activating one of a set of pre-loaded maneuver sequences. Despite the situation, significant non-routine activities were accomplished to address anomalies and programmatic needs. A major upgrade of the ground data system was performed, replacing aging hardware and updating obsolete software, although on a longer timeline than originally planned. An innovative parallel operations architecture was used to validate functionality and performance of the upgraded system, while still operating on the legacy system. Similarly, the flight system testbed needed to be upgraded, with the configuration swapped multiple times to accommodate testing and other programmatic needs. The spacecraft experienced a significant corruption of the non-volatile memory. Diagnosis and recovery using new tools were performed almost entirely from home. In summary, SMAP remote operations during the pandemic have been and continue to be highly successful. These experiences have demonstrated that much of the operations may actually be conducted remotely. © 2022 IEEE.

MANAGEMENT OF AUTOIMMUNE HAEMOLYTIC ANAEMIA DURING PREGNANCY OR POST-PARTUM: AN INTERNATIONAL MULTI-CENTRE EXPERIENCE

Background: Autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) during pregnancy is a rare finding, and few is known about maternal and foetal outcomes. AIHA may either develop or relapse during gestation and postpartum or be an issue in a patient on active therapy who becomes pregnant. AIHA management during pregnancy and lactation is not standardized and drug use is often limited by safety concerns. Aims: We studied AIHA impact on pregnancy focusing on disease severity, treatment need and maternal/foetal outcome. Methods: Through a multicentric retrospective cohort study, we identified 38 pregnancies occurred in 28 women from 1997 to 2021 in 10 European centres in Italy, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, USA, and Spain. All included patients had a previous AIHA history or developed/exacerbated AIHA during gestation or postpartum. AIHA was classified according to the direct antiglobulin test. Results: We registered 18 warm AIHA (10 IgG;8 IgG+C3d), 2 cold agglutinin disease, 3 mixed and 5 atypical forms (Table 1). Evans syndrome (i.e., association of AIHA and immune thrombocytopenia or neutropenia) was present in 4. Mean age at AIHA diagnosis was 27 (3-39) and at pregnancy 32 (21-41) years. AIHA diagnosis predated pregnancy in 15 women and had required at least 1 therapy line in all of them, and >2 lines in 12 (rituximab, N=7;cytotoxic immunosuppressants, N=6;splenectomy, N=5). Among these 15 patients, 6 had a relapse during pregnancy, 3 during postpartum and 9 were on active treatment at the time of pregnancy (steroids, N=8;cyclosporine, N=1;azathioprine, N=1;the latter stopped after positive pregnancy test). A patient with a previous AIHA, relapsed as immune thrombocytopenic purpura during pregnancy. Further 8 patients had an AIHA onset during gestation and 2 postpartum. A patient had AIHA onset during the postpartum of the 1st pregnancy and relapsed during the 2nd one. In the 20 women experiencing AIHA during pregnancy/postpartum, median Hb and LDH levels were 6,4 g/dL (3,1 - 8,7) and 588 UI/L (269-1631), respectively. Management consisted in blood transfusions (N=10) and prompt establishment of steroid therapy+/-IVIG (N=20), all with response (complete N=13, partial N=7). After delivery, rituximab was necessary in 4 patients and cyclosporine was added in one. Anti-thrombotic prophylaxis was given in 7 patients. Overall, we registered 10 obstetric complications (10/38, 26%), including 4 early miscarriages, a premature rupture of membranes, a placental detachment, 2 preeclampsia, a postpartum infection and a biliary colic. Apart from the case of biliary colic and one of the two cases of preeclampsia, 8/10 complications occurred during active haemolysis and treatment for AIHA. Nine foetal adverse events (9/38, 24%) were reported: a transitory respiratory distress of the new-born in a mother with active AIHA, 3 cases of foetal growth restriction, a preterm birth, an infant reporting neurologic sequelae, a case of AIHA of the new-born requiring intravenous immunoglobulins, blood transfusions and plasma exchange, and 2 perinatal deaths. The latter both occurred in women on active AIHA therapy and were secondary to a massive placental detachment and a symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. (Figure Presented ) Summary/Conclusion: AIHA developing/reactivating during pregnancy or postpartum is rare (about 5%) but mainly severe requiring steroid therapy and transfusions. Importantly, severe maternal and foetal complications may occur in up to 26% of cases mostly associated with active disease, pinpointing the importance of maintaining a high level of awareness. Passive maternal autoantibodies transfer to the foetus seems a rare event.

Semen parameters and sex hormones as affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Impaired semen quality and reproductive hormone levels were observed in patients during and after recovery from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which raised concerns about negative effects on male fertility. Therefore, this study systematically reviews available data on semen parameters and sex hormones in patients with COVID-19. METHODS: Systematic search was performed on PubMed and Google Scholar until July 18th, 2022. We identified relevant articles that discussed the effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) on male fertility. RESULTS: A total number of 1,684 articles were identified by using a suitable keyword search strategy. After screening, 26 articles were considered eligible for inclusion in this study. These articles included a total of 1,960 controls and 2,106 patients. When all studies were considered, the results showed that the semen parameters and sex hormone levels of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhibited some significant differences compared with controls. Fortunately, these differences gradually disappear as patients recover from COVID-19. CONCLUSION: While present data show the negative effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on male fertility, this does not appear to be long-term. Semen quality and hormone levels will gradually increase to normal as patients recover.

Seasonal variation, sources, and risk assessment of PM2.5-bound PAHs in Nantong, China: A pre- and post-COVID-19 case study

Between 2018 and 2022, a total of 231 PM2.5 samples were collected in Nantong, China, and analyzed online for 16 US EPA PAHs utilizing a variety of analytical methodologies, including high-performance liquid chromatography data analysis, principal component analysis, and characteristic ratio analysis. The seasonal variation and pollution characteristics of 16 PAHs in PM2.5 over a long period in Nantong, China, were analyzed, and correlations and traceability changes with a variety of emission sources were established. Additionally, health assessment models for BaP equivalent concentration, daily exposure dose, lifetime excess risk of cancer, and life expectancy loss were constructed for various ages and genders. The results indicated that the total number of days with BaP concentrations less than the national limit standard of 1.0 ng/m(3) was 60.17% (139/231), with rates of 25.40%, 35.71%, and 94.05% from 2019 to 2021, respectively;the total concentration range of 16 PAHs demonstrated a downward trend, but pollution was relatively severe in winter. The seasonal variation showed winter > autumn > spring > summer. The detection rates of 4 and 5 rings were generally high and fluctuated between dropping and increasing. Principal factor analysis and characteristic ratio traceability analysis indicated that PAH pollution is primarily caused by local coal-fired sources and traffic emissions, with a new trend of biomass combustion. Furthermore, BaP remains the primary contributor to carcinogenic factors, and the health risk is higher in females than in males, and in adults than in children. A low level of PAHs in the air may have health benefits. Traffic control and flow restrictions, as well as production restrictions, are all part of Nantong's COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control policies. These policies contributed to PAH risk prevention and control, as well as pollution reduction.

MAGNETOFLUIDICS-ENABLED POINT-OF-CARE SARS-COV-2 DIAGNOSTICS

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate, global eradication of infections is unlikely, and COVID-19 is predicted to become a seasonal or endemic disease like influenza. Widespread detection of variant strains will be critical to inform policy decisions to mitigate further spread, and post-pandemic multiplexed screening of respiratory viruses will be necessary to properly manage patients presenting with similar respiratory symptoms. We have developed a portable, magnetofluidic platform for multiplexed PCR testing in <30 min. Cartridges were designed for multiplexed detection of SARS-CoV-2 with either distinctive variant mutations or with Influenza A and B and tested with clinical samples. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.