On-site analysis of COVID-19 on the surfaces in wards.

SARS-Cov-2 has erupted across the globe, and confirmed cases of COVID-19 pose a high infection risk. Infected patients typically receive their treatment in specific isolation wards, where they are confined for at least 14 days. The virus may contaminate any surface of the room, especially frequently touched surfaces. Therefore, surface contamination in wards should be monitored for disease control and hygiene purposes. Herein, surface contamination in the ward was detected on-site using an RNA extraction-free rapid method. The whole detection process, from surface sample collection to readout of the detection results, was finished within 45 min. The nucleic acid extraction-free method requires minimal labor. More importantly, the tests were performed on-site and the results were obtained almost in real-time. The test confirmed that 31 patients contaminated seven individual sites. Among the sampled surfaces, the electrocardiogram fingertip presented a 72.7% positive rate, indicating that this surface is an important hygiene site. Meanwhile, the bedrails showed the highest correlation with other surfaces, so should be detected daily. Another surface with high contamination risk was the door handle in the bathroom. To our knowledge, we present the first on-site analysis of COVID-19 surface contamination in wards. The results and applied technique provide a potential further reference for disease control and hygiene suggestions.

Long noncoding RNA MALAT1 as a candidate serological biomarker for the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: To investigate the diagnostic efficacy of long noncoding RNA metastasis-associated in lung adenocarcinoma transcript l (MALAT1) as a candidate serological biomarker for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS: Diagnostic studies relevant to circulation long noncoding RNA MALAT1 as a candidate serological biomarker for NSCLC were electronically systematically searched in PubMed, EMBASE, EBSCO and CNKI databases. Suitable studies were included in the meta-analysis by pooling the diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (+LR), negative likelihood ratio (-LR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and area under the symmetric ROC curve (AUC) through a random or fixed effects model. Deeks' funnel plot was applied for publication bias evaluation. RESULTS: Six studies with eight datasets were finally included in the meta-analysis after a systematic search of the databases was performed. The pooled diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, +LR, -LR and DOR were 0.81 (95% CI:0.78-0.84), 0.67 (95% CI:0.63-0.71), 2.61 (95% CI:1.81-3.71), 0.28 (95% CI:0.19-0.43) and 13.73 (95% CI:6.19-30.44), respectively. The pooled area under the ROC curve (AUC) were 0.8663 and 0.8658, respectively by symmetric and asymmetric methods. CONCLUSION: Based on the results of our study, serum long noncoding RNA MALAT1 is a promising biomarker for NSCLC screening. However, due to its low specificity, MALAT1 positive cases need further validation for NSCLC by other diagnostic methods such as radiology, cytology, etc.