Changing patterns of infectious diseases in children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each infectious disease has had its own epidemic pattern and seasonality for decades. However, public health mitigation measures during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have resulted in changing epidemic patterns of infectious diseases. Stringent measures resulted in low incidences of various infectious diseases during the outbreak of COVID-19, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, pneumococcus, enterovirus, and parainfluenza. Owing to the prevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and subsequent immunity development, decreasing virulence of SARS-CoV-2, and worldwide immunization against SARS-CoV-2 in children beyond 6 months of age, mitigation measures are lifted country by country. Consequently, the immunity debt to infectious respiratory viruses other than SARS-CoV-2 contributed to the "off-season," "see-saw," and "upsurge" patterns of various infectious diseases in children. Moreover, apart from the persistence of SARS-CoV-2, the coexistence of other circulating viruses or bacterial outbreaks may lead to twindemics or tripledemics during the following years. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain hand hygiene and immunization policies against various pathogens to alleviate the ongoing impact of infectious diseases on children.

A multi-functional electrochemical sensing system using microfluidic technology for the detection of urea and creatinine.

This study presents a new microfluidic system capable of precise measurements of two important biomarkers, urea and creatinine, automatically. In clinical applications, high levels of these two biomarkers are early indicators of nephropathy or renal failure and should be monitored on a regular basis. The microfluidic system is composed of a microfluidic chip, a control circuit system, a compressed air source and several electromagnetic valves to form a handheld system. The microfluidic chip is fabricated by using micro-electromechanical systems and microfluidic techniques comprising electrochemical sensor arrays and polydimethylsiloxane-based microfluidic structures such as micropumps/micromixers, normally closed valves and microchannels. The microfluidic system performs a variety of critical processes including sample pretreatment, mixing, transportation and detection on a single chip. The experimental results show that the entire procedure takes approximately 40 min, which is much faster than the traditional method (more than 6 h). Furthermore, the total sample volume consumed in each operation is only 0.1 mL, which is significantly less than that required in a large system (5 mL). The developed automatic microfluidic system may provide a powerful platform for further clinical applications.

A Rare Complication During Transcatheter Closure of Double Atrial Septal Defects With Incomplete Cor Triatriatum Dexter: A Case Report.

The cor triatiatum dexter is an embryologic remnant derived from the right atrium and totally separate from the right atrium. An incomplete cor triatiatum dexter (iCTD) means a partially obstructive remnant at the right atrium. It is usually formed by a remnant of the Eustachian valve (EV), Thebesian valve (ThV), or Chiari network (CN). This anatomic variant is usually asymptomatic but is often associated with other heart abnormalities including atrial septal defects (ASDs), and has the potential to hamper percutaneous heart procedures such as electrophysiological study or ASD closure. Herein, we report a rare complication, transient heart ischemia, in transcatheter closure of double ASDs in a 55-year-old woman with EV. This rare complication was thought to be caused by coronary sinus obstruction during device placement. The ischemic change was resolved spontaneously after we withdrew the device. For a second attempt, we adjusted the position of the device to avoid coronary sinus obstruction under transesophageal echocardiogram guidance and the device was smoothly deployed in a good position with a minimal residual shunt. This case suggests that anatomy details in percutaneous heart procedures are important, and this rare and dangerous complication, heart ischemia, should be identified immediately during the procedure.

Reversible posterior encephalopathy syndrome as the presentation of late postpartum eclampsia: a case report.

We presented a case of previous healthy postpartum woman suffering from seizure of sudden onset with conscious change and anisocoric pupils. Head magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed multiple high signal-intensity lesions on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) / T2 weighted image (T2WI) in bilateral subcortical white matters (especially the parieto-occipital areas), brain stem, and bilateral cerebellum, and mild high signal-intensity lesions on diffusion weighted MRI (DWI). These neurological and radiological anomalies recovered completely later. The final diagnosis was the rare presentation of late postpartum eclampsia as reversible posterior encephalopathy syndrome (RPES).

Aurora-A overexpression associates with Ha-ras codon-12 mutation and blackfoot disease endemic area in bladder cancer.

Our data revealed that 59.4% of the bladder cancer specimens showed Aurora-A overexpression, of which 31.8% also had Ha-ras codon-12 mutation; 45.5% were from blackfoot-disease endemic areas in which arsenic exposure is a major environment factor associated with various cancer formation. We further demonstrated that arsenic treatment of the immortalized bladder cell line, E7, increased Aurora-A expression. All together, co-existence of Aurora-A overexpression and Ha-ras mutation suggests a possible additively effect on the tumorigenesis of bladder cancer. In addition, Aurora-A overexpression and up-regulated by arsenic exposure opens a new direction for exploring the occurrence of bladder cancer occurrence in Taiwan.