Retrospective analysis of clinical characteristics and outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 critically ill patients with or without vascular calcification

Aim To analyze the differences in clinical characteristics and outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) critically ill patients with or without vascular calcification. Methods COVID-19 critically ill patients admitted to the intensive care unit of Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in February 2020 were analyzed retrospectively. According to the chest CT findings, the patients were divided into vascular calcification group and non-vascular calcification group. The vascular calcification group was further divided into aortic calcification group, coronary calcification group and simultaneous calcification group (both aorta and coronary artery calcification). The clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients were compared in different groups. Results Compared with the non-vascular calcification group, the patients in the vascular calcification group were older and had a higher proportion of hypertension and coronary heart disease, which showed higher levels of leukocyte count, neutro-phil count, C-reactive protein, globulin, lactate dehydrogenase, international normalized ratio, D-dimer, creatinine, crea-tine kinase-MB, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin, myohemoglobin and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, lower levels of lymphocyte count, platelet count, albumin, estimated glomerular filtration rate, and higher risk of death. Compared with aortic calcification group, the outcomes of coronary calcification group and simultaneous calcification group were worse. Conclusion Vascular calcification, especially coronary artery calcification, may be a risk factor for poor prognosis in COVID-19 critically ill patients. © 2022, Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Arteriosclerosis. All rights reserved.

Differential of antiviral activity between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.

Objective To investigated the in vitro antiviral activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against different variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Prototype, Beta, Delta, Omicron) by changing the sequence of drug and virus introduction. Methods Prophylactic treatment: Vero E6 cells were treated with Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine sulfate (200.00, 150.00, 100.00, 50.00, 16.70, 5.55, 1.85, 0.62, 0.21 micromol.L-1) for 1 h, then the virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was repalced with fresh medium until the end of the experiment. Post-entry treatment: Vero E6 cells were incubated with virus for 2 h, then the virus was removed and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. Full-time treatment: Vero E6 cells were pretreated with the drug for 1 h ahead, then virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was discarded and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. After 72 h of culture, the cells were observed to see whether they became round and shed to determine the cytopathic situation, and the semi-maximum effect concentration (EC50) and drug selection index (SI) were calculated. Results Both drugs were less effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2. Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment. EC50 of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was less than chloroquine, SI was greater than chloroquine, antiviral effect of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was better than chloroquine. The antiviral effect of chloroquine (EC50 = 0.904 micromol.L-1) and hydroxychloroquine sulfate (EC50 = 0.143 micromol.L-1) was more significant against Omicron variant than other variants under therapeutic and full-time treatment conditions. Conclusion Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment, and both drugs were significantly more active against the Omicron variant than the other variants.Copyright © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.

Demonstration of Remote Control of Critical Care Ventilators and the Integrated Clinical Environment

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic posed numerous challenges to patient care, including extensive PPE use, patient care in isolation rooms, inadequate numbers of intensivists particularly in rural communities, use of unfamiliar ventilators that would be partially remedied by the ability to remotely control lung ventilation. The goals of the project were to study the intended use, risk management, usability, cybersecurity for remote control of ventilators and demonstrate the use of a single interface for several different ventilators. Method(s): Clinical scenarios were developed including remote control of the ventilator from an antechamber of an isolation room, nursing station within the same ICU, and remote control from across the country. A risk analysis and was performed and a risk management plan established using the AAMI Consensus Report--Emergency Use Guidance for Remote Control of Medical Devices. A cybersecurity plan is in progress. Testing was done at the MDPNP laboratory. We worked with Nihon Kohden OrangeMed NKV-550, Santa Ana, CA, and Thornhill Medical MOVES SLC, Toronto, Canada. Both companies modified their devices to allow remote control by and application operating on DocBox's Apiary platform. Apiary is a commercially available ICE solution, DocBox Inc, Waltham, MA. An expert panel was created to provide guidance on the design of a single common, simple to use graphical user interface (GUI) for both ventilators. Manufacturers' ventilation modes were mapped to ISO 19223 vocabulary, data was logged using ISO/IEEE 11073-10101 terminology using AAMI 2700-2-1, Medical Devices and Medical Systems - Essential safety and performance requirements for equipment comprising the patient-centric integrated clinical environment (ICE): Part 2-1: Requirements for forensic data logging. Result(s): We demonstrated that both ventilators can be controlled and monitored using common user interface within an institution and across the country. Pressure and flow waveforms were available for the NKV-550 ventilator, and usual ventilator measurements were displayed in near-real time. The interface allowed changing FiO2, ventilation mode, respiratory rate, tidal volume, inspiratory pressure, and alarm settings. At times, increased network latency negatively affected the transmission of waveforms. Conclusion(s): We were able to demonstrate remote control of 2 ventilators with a common user interface. Further work needs to be done on cybersecurity, effects of network perturbations, safety of ventilator remote control, usability implications of having a common UI for different devices needs to be investigated.

Monitoring of CT dose and analysis of radiological protection in CT modules applied for COVID-19.

Objective: To investigate the safety and protection level of radiological treatment in the CT modules in the makeshift hosptials in Wuhan during the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 cases. Method(s): The layout of the CT modules in makeshift hospitals, radiological protection facilities and personal protective equipment were investigated. Based on the national standards, the CT dose index was estimated and the radiological protection level at the CT modules were measured. Result(s): The layout of the CT modules in makeshift hospitals is reasonable, with well-equipped radiological protection facilities. Of 23 CT modules, 20 were up to standards with acceptability of 87.0%. The other three were unqualified each with 1 detection points having values in excess of the national standards. Which, after being modified immediately reached the national standards. In addition, CT dose index for 7 CT modules were estimated, with CTDIW within +/-7.5%. Conclusion(s): The CT modules in Wuhan meet the requirements of radiological safety and protection during the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 cases.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.

Differential of antiviral activity between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

Objective To investigated the in vitro antiviral activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against different variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Prototype, Beta, Delta, Omicron) by changing the sequence of drug and virus introduction. Methods Prophylactic treatment: Vero E6 cells were treated with Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine sulfate (200.00, 150.00, 100.00, 50.00, 16.70, 5.55, 1.85, 0.62, 0.21 µmol·L−1) for 1 h, then the virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was repalced with fresh medium until the end of the experiment. Post-entry treatment: Vero E6 cells were incubated with virus for 2 h, then the virus was removed and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. Full-time treatment: Vero E6 cells were pretreated with the drug for 1 h ahead, then virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was discarded and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. After 72 h of culture, the cells were observed to see whether they became round and shed to determine the cytopathic situation, and the semi-maximum effect concentration (EC50) and drug selection index (SI) were calculated. Results Both drugs were less effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2. Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment. EC50 of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was less than chloroquine, SI was greater than chloroquine, antiviral effect of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was better than chloroquine. The antiviral effect of chloroquine (EC50 = 0.904 µmol·L−1) and hydroxychloroquine sulfate (EC50 = 0.143 µmol·L−1) was more significant against Omicron variant than other variants under therapeutic and full-time treatment conditions. Conclusion Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment, and both drugs were significantly more active against the Omicron variant than the other variants. © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.

COKG-QA: Multi-hop Question Answering over COVID-19 Knowledge Graphs

COVID-19 evolves rapidly and an enormous number of people worldwide desire instant access to COVID-19 information such as the overview, clinic knowledge, vaccine, prevention measures, and COVID-19 mutation. Question answering (QA) has become the mainstream interaction way for users to consume the ever-growing information by posing natural language questions. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to develop a QA system to offer consulting services all the time to relieve the stress of health services. In particular, people increasingly pay more attention to complex multi-hop questions rather than simple ones during the lasting pandemic, but the existing COVID-19 QA systems fail to meet their complex information needs. In this paper, we introduce a novel multi-hop QA system called COKG-QA, which reasons over multiple relations over large-scale COVID-19 Knowledge Graphs to return answers given a question. In the field of question answering over knowledge graph, current methods usually represent entities and schemas based on some knowledge embedding models and represent questions using pre-trained models. While it is convenient to represent different knowledge (i.e., entities and questions) based on specified embeddings, an issue raises that these separate representations come from heterogeneous vector spaces. We align question embeddings with knowledge embeddings in a common semantic space by a simple but effective embedding projection mechanism. Furthermore, we propose combining entity embeddings with their corresponding schema embeddings which served as important prior knowledge, to help search for the correct answer entity of specified types. In addition, we derive a large multi-hop Chinese COVID-19 dataset (called COKG-DATA for remembering) for COKG-QA based on the linked knowledge graph OpenKG-COVID19 launched by OpenKG((1)), including comprehensive and representative information about COVID-19. COKG-QA achieves quite competitive performance in the 1-hop and 2-hop data while obtaining the best result with significant improvements in the 3-hop. And it is more efficient to be used in the QA system for users. Moreover, the user study shows that the system not only provides accurate and interpretable answers but also is easy to use and comes with smart tips and suggestions.

Impact of Meteorological Conditions and Human Activities on Air Quality During the COVID-19 Lockdown in Northeast China

During the lockdown implemented to curb the spread of COVID-19, human activities have drastically reduced, providing a valuable opportunity to study and compare the impact of meteorological conditions and human activities on air quality. In this study, large-scale weather circulation, local meteorological conditions, and the impact of human activities are comprehensively considered, and changes in the concentration of major air pollutants in the northeast during this period are systematically studied. The large-scale weather circulation patterns that mainly affect the northeast region are divided into nine types by using the T-mode Principal components analysis objective circulation classification method. It is found that the northeast region is located at the edge of weak high pressure (Types 1, 2, and 7) and at the rear of high pressure (Type 4) and has higher concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, SO2, and CO;in cyclonic weather systems, low vortices (Types 3 and 5) and under the influence of the updraft (Type 6) in front of the trough, the ozone concentration is higher. The changes in the concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, CO, SO2, and O-3 in the three cities, namely Shenyang, Changchun, and Harbin, during the lockdown period are compared, and it is found that the concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, CO, and SO2 have a tendency to first decrease and then increase, while the changes of O-3 concentration are cyclical and increased significantly during this period. This demonstrates that pollutants such as PM2.5, NO2, CO, and SO2 are more susceptible to human activities and local meteorological conditions, and changes in O-3 concentration are more closely related to changes in weather circulation types. Finally, the FLEXPART-WRF model is used to simulate the pollution process of nine circulation types, which confirms that particulate pollution in the northeast is mainly affected by local emissions and local westward sinking airflow.

Application of the standardized nasopharyngeal swab sampling for the nucleic acid detection of COVID-19

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to investigate a relatively convenient, safe, and sensitive sampling method in the nucleic acid detection of the 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Materials and method: The nasopharyngeal swab samples of patients admitted to the 13 inpatient areas of the Tumor Center, Xiehe Hospital of the affiliated Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (temporarily transformed into a designated hospital for critical patients with COVID-19) from February 21 to 23, 2020 were used for the nucleic acid detection analysis of 2019-nCoV. The nasopharyngeal swab samples in the present inpatient area were obtained by a standardized sampling method. Results: A total of 663 samples were collected from the tumor center with 125 positive ones. Among these samples, 33 samples were collected from the present inpatient area, and 11 cases (33%) were positive. A further 630 samples were collected from other inpatient areas, in which 114 samples (18%) were positive. The difference in the positivity between the present inpatient area and other areas was statistically significant. Conclusion: The standardized nasopharyngeal swabs sampling had a high positive detection rate in the nucleic acid detection of 2019-nCoV and was safer and more convenient for medical staff and worthy of wider clinical use.

Comparative analysis of the impact of weather conditions and human activities on air quality in the Dongting and Poyang Lake Region during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 lockdown, only the most basic and necessary production activities were retained in China. Such strict measures have caused many inconveniences to the people and the economy, but also provided the research community with a rare opportunity to compare the effects of weather conditions and human activities on air quality in the region. Here, a comparative analysis of the impact of weather conditions and human activities on air quality in the Dongting and Poyang Lake Region (DPLR) is proposed during the COVID-19 pandemic based on a circulation-to-environment approach. T-mode objective circulation classification method was applied to explore the effects of weather conditions on the concentration of two typical pollutants (PM2.5 and ozone) affecting the DPLR. PM2.5 and ozone concentrations under the nine identified circulation patterns are discussed. Under the control of circulation type CT1, CT3 and CT6, the PM2.5 concentrations in this area are high, while under the control of CT2 and CT9, the ozone concentrations are high. By comparing the variation in PM2.5 and ozone concentrations in three important cities in the region (Wuhan, Changsha, and Nanchang) during the three stages (Before Controlling, During Controlling and After Controlling) of COVID-19 from January to April 2020 and the corresponding months of a reference period (2015–2019), it is found that after controlling the human activities, the PM2.5 concentration dropped by 37.45%, while the ozone concentration increased by 111.83%. Ozone concentration was mainly affected by the synoptic circulation pattern, while the PM2.5 concentration was more affected by human activities. © 2021 Turkish National Committee for Air Pollution Research and Control

Paper-based products as promising substitutes for plastics in the context of bans on non-biodegradables

As a global environmental problem, plastic pollution has attracted worldwide attention. Plastic wastes not only disrupt ecosystems and biodiversity, but they also threaten human life and health. Countries around the world have enacted regulations in recent years to limit the use of plastics. Paper products have been proposed as promising substitutes for plastics, which undoubtedly brings unprecedented opportunities to the pulp and paper industry. However, paper products have some deficiencies in replacing certain plastic products. Research and development to improve paper properties and reduce production costs is needed to meet such challenges.

Towards NIR-VIS Masked Face Recognition

Near-infrared to visible (NIR-VIS) face recognition is the most common case in heterogeneous face recognition, which aims to match a pair of face images captured from two different modalities. Existing deep learning based methods have made remarkable progress in NIR-VIS face recognition, while it encounters certain newly-emerged difficulties during the pandemic of COVID-19, since people are supposed to wear facial masks to cut off the spread of the virus. We define this task as NIR-VIS masked face recognition, and find it problematic with the masked face in the NIR probe image. First, the lack of masked face data is a challenging issue for the network training. Second, most of the facial parts (cheeks, mouth, nose) are fully occluded by the mask, which leads to a large amount of loss of information. Third, the domain gap still exists in the remaining facial parts. In such scenario, the existing methods suffer from significant performance degradation caused by the above issues. In this paper, we aim to address the challenge of NIR-VIS masked face recognition from the perspectives of training data and training method. Specifically, we propose a novel heterogeneous training method to maximize the mutual information shared by the face representation of two domains with the help of semi-siamese networks. In addition, a 3D face reconstruction based approach is employed to synthesize masked face from the existing NIR image. Resorting to these practices, our solution provides the domain-invariant face representation which is also robust to the mask occlusion. Extensive experiments on three NIR-VIS face datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and cross-dataset-generalization capacity of our method. IEEE

Analysis of problems with online teaching of ophthalmology for undergraduates during COVID-19 epidemic

AIM: To analyze the problems faced by teachers and undergraduates online teaching. METHODS: A self-designed questionnaire survey and result of examination comparison were used. The contents of the questionnaire include the time used before and after class, the confusion faced by online teaching and the self-evaluation of teaching effect. 63 students and all teachers were participants in the questionnaire survey. The survey is from May 2020 to June 2020. RESULTS: The average time spent by students before class of online teaching had no difference with that of offline teaching, while the average time spent by teachers for online teaching before class was significantly longer than that for offline teaching. 63% of the undergraduates considered that online teaching takes much more time to review after class. 95% of the students admitted that online teaching was easier to lose concentration because of lack of interaction with teachers, and 73% of teachers though that for online teaching they had less passionate compared to off line teaching. Regarding to the questionnaire survey, 73% of the instructors expected that the effect of online teaching would be worse than that of offline teaching. Surprisingly, 95% of the students thought that there had no significant difference in knowledge mastering between online and offline teaching after reviewing of courseware. For the future teaching model, 91% of the teachers and 79% of the students preferred the combination of watching pre-recorded video and live broadcasting. CONCLUSION: The lack of interaction is the primary issue of online teaching. Online teaching can achieve the same effect as offline teaching, whereas it needs more post-class time for students. The combination of watching pre-recorded video and live-broadcasting is the online teaching mode recommended by teachers and students.

Association of sex with clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients: A retrospective analysis of 1190 cases

Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been a pandemic. The objective of our study was to explore the association between sex and clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Methods: Detailed clinical data including clinical characteristics, laboratory tests, imaging features and treat-ments of 1190 cases of adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 were retrospectively analyzed. Associations between sex and clinical outcomes were identified by multivariable Cox regression analysis. Results: There were 635 (53.4%) male and 555 (46.6%) female patients in this study. Higher rates of acute kidney injury (5.5% vs. 2.9%, p = 0.026), acute cardiac injury (9.1% vs. 4.3%, p = 0.001), and disseminated intravascular coagulation (2.5% vs. 0.7%, P = 0.024) were observed in males. Compared with female patients, male patients with COVID-19 had a higher inhospital mortality rate (15.7% vs. 10.3%, p = 0.005). However, Cox regression analysis showed that sex did not influence inhospital mortality of COVID-19 patients. Conclusions: Male sex was associated with a worse prognosis of COVID-19, but it seems not to be an independent prognostic factor.

Study on vegetable emergency support technology under epidemic

As an important nutrient source in the diet of residents, vegetables are an important guarantee to enhance immunity. The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to labor restrictions, poor logistics and transportation, and changes in residents' consumption and eating patterns, which have challenged the traditional supply model of vegetables. In response to this challenge, this study analyzes the outbreak of vegetables reserves, distribution, supply, quality and safety and the influence of supply mode in five aspects. It also analyzes how to carry out technical research in order to make timely adjustments to the supply mode of vegetable products and ensure the residents' vegetable supply. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

[Consideration and prevention of the aerosol transmission of 2019 novel coronavirus].

This article was published ahead of print on the official website of Chinese Journal of Ophthalmology on March 14, 2020. Novel coronavirus pneumonia broke out and spread to the whole nation since December 2019. The fight against the virus is now at a critical stage. Previous epidemiological investigations and animal experiments suggested aerosol could perform as a virus transmitter. Based on the clinical observation, the possibility of aerosol transmission of 2019 novel coronavirus has aroused much attention. This article focuses on the feature of aerosol transmission and the pathogens involved in. We analyze the possibility of aerosol transmission of the novel coronavirus. Relevant strategies for preventing novel coronavirus pneumonia are established for the medical personnel and general public during their work or daily life. (Chin J Ophthalmol, 2020, 56:653-656).