Prognosis assessment model based on low serum calcium in patients with acute pulmonary thromboembolism.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The pulmonary embolism severity index (PESI) and simplified PESI (sPESI) are recommended to recognize patients with acute pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) with low prognosis risk, which is of great significance for treatment. This study aims to verify the influence of hypocalcaemia on the prognosis of patients with PTE and to establish a new prognosis assessment model. METHODS: This is an observational, multicentre study enrolling patients with PTE from February 2010 to June 2020 across 12 Chinese hospitals. Variables in PESI, serum calcium levels and patient survival status as of 5 July 2020 were collected. The area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic curve, sensitivity, specificity and Youden index were used to evaluate model performance. RESULTS: In the cohort of 4196 patients with PTE, independent associations existed between hypocalcaemia and mid- and long-term mortalities (p <0.05). By including hypocalcaemia, the new 30-day death risk prediction rule, Peking Union Medical College Hospital rule (PUMCH rule), showed significantly higher specificity (0.622 [0.582, 0.661]; p <0.001) than the PESI (0.514 [0.473, 0.554]) and sPESI (0.484 [0.444, 0.525]) and similar sensitivity (0.963 [0.810, 0.999]; p = 0.161) with PESI (0.889 [0.708, 0.976]) and sPESI (0.963 [0.810, 0.999]) in the internal validation cohort. Well-performing predictive validity was also verified on a constructed external validation cohort. CONCLUSION: Hypocalcaemia is independently associated with mid- and long-term PTE mortalities. The PUMCH rule showed significantly higher specificity than the PESI and sPESI and similar sensitivity, which may be used as a prognostic assessment tool for patients with acute PTE.

[Preparation and characterization of dihydroartemisinin/ hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin inclusion complex].

To optimize the preparation method of the complex of dihydroartemisinin (DHA) included by hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HP-beta-CD), the molar ratio of DHA and HP-beta-CD, inclusion temperature and inclusion time were optimized by the orthogonal design method with the inclusion drug yield and drug loading as the evaluation indexes. The IR spectrum, DSC and PXRD analyses were employed to characterize the complex and the molecular simulation was processed to investigate the tendency of complex formation. The optimized molar ratio of DHA and HP-beta-CD was 1 : 5, and the optimized preparation was performed under 50 degrees C for 1 h. The IR spectrum, DSC and PXRD analyses indicated the formation of the complex. The low binding free energy and the high solvent accessible surface obtained by molecular simulation showed that DHA could be included by HP-beta-CD and its solubility could be improved significantly. In conclusion, the optimized conditions for the preparation of DHA-HP-beta-CD complex provide a theoretical and experimental basis for further scale-up research.