Edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) for real-time automatic quantification of filariasis in mobile microscopy.

Filariasis, a neglected tropical disease caused by roundworms, is a significant public health concern in many tropical countries. Microscopic examination of blood samples can detect and differentiate parasite species, but it is time consuming and requires expert microscopists, a resource that is not always available. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) can assist in the diagnosis of this disease by automatically detecting and differentiating microfilariae. In line with the target product profile for lymphatic filariasis as defined by the World Health Organization, we developed an edge AI system running on a smartphone whose camera is aligned with the ocular of an optical microscope that detects and differentiates filarias species in real time without the internet connection. Our object detection algorithm that uses the Single-Shot Detection (SSD) MobileNet V2 detection model was developed with 115 cases, 85 cases with 1903 fields of view and 3342 labels for model training, and 30 cases with 484 fields of view and 873 labels for model validation before clinical validation, is able to detect microfilarias at 10x magnification and distinguishes four species of them at 40x magnification: Loa loa, Mansonella perstans, Wuchereria bancrofti, and Brugia malayi. We validated our augmented microscopy system in the clinical environment by replicating the diagnostic workflow encompassed examinations at 10x and 40x with the assistance of the AI models analyzing 18 samples with the AI running on a middle range smartphone. It achieved an overall precision of 94.14%, recall of 91.90% and F1 score of 93.01% for the screening algorithm and 95.46%, 97.81% and 96.62% for the species differentiation algorithm respectively. This innovative solution has the potential to support filariasis diagnosis and monitoring, particularly in resource-limited settings where access to expert technicians and laboratory equipment is scarce.

Evaluation of the Performance of a 3D-Printed Smartphone-Based Retinal Imaging Device as a Screening Tool for Retinal Pathology in Mozambique.

Low-income countries carry approximately 90% of the global burden of visual impairment, and up to 80% of this could be prevented or cured. However, there are only a few studies on the prevalence of retinal disease in these countries. Easier access to retinal information would allow differential diagnosis and promote strategies to improve eye health, which are currently scarce. This pilot study aims to evaluate the functionality and usability of a tele-retinography system for the detection of retinal pathology, based on a low-cost portable retinal scanner, manufactured with 3D printing and controlled by a mobile phone with an application designed ad hoc. The study was conducted at the Manhiça Rural Hospital in Mozambique. General practitioners, with no specific knowledge of ophthalmology or previous use of retinography, performed digital retinographies on 104 hospitalized patients. The retinographies were acquired in video format, uploaded to a web platform, and reviewed centrally by two ophthalmologists, analyzing the image quality and the presence of retinal lesions. In our sample there was a high proportion of exudates and hemorrhages-8% and 4%, respectively. In addition, the presence of lesions was studied in patients with known underlying risk factors for retinal disease, such as HIV, diabetes, and/or hypertension. Our tele-retinography system based on a smartphone coupled with a simple and low-cost 3D printed device is easy to use by healthcare personnel without specialized ophthalmological knowledge and could be applied for the screening and initial diagnosis of retinal pathology.

Characteristics of Pediatric Emergency Department Presentations of Anaphylaxis in Spain.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to identify the triggers of pediatric anaphylaxis in Spain and to analyze the circumstances of the episode. METHODS: Planned secondary analysis of a prospective observational multicenter study endorsed by the Spanish Society of Pediatric Emergencies including children aged younger than 18 years diagnosed with anaphylaxis in 7 Spanish pediatric emergency departments (EDs) between 2016 and 2018. We analyzed factors related to the anaphylaxis episode and its management. RESULTS: Four hundred fifty-three cases were registered, happening mainly at home (295 [65.1%]), school (65 [14.3%]), and street (61 [13.5%]). The median age was 5 years, 143 (31.6%) had previous episodes, and 165 (36.4%) had previously been prescribed an epinephrine autoinjector, used in 40 (24.2% of those prescribed). Two thirds were well-appearing when arriving to the pediatric ED. Food was the trigger in 396 (87.4%). In 349 with a single food involved, the most frequent were milk (108 [30.4%]), nuts (103 [29.0%]), hen's egg (40 [11.3%]), and fish (31 [8.7%]), with variations related to the age of the child. CONCLUSIONS: Food, especially milk and nuts, are responsible for most anaphylaxis diagnosed in Spanish pediatric EDs. Consideration should be given to improving health education due to the low use of epinephrine autoinjectors.

Presencia de sustancias psicoactivas en las víctimas de violencia sexual en la provincia de Alicante (España) durante los años 2016-2020 / Incidence of psychoactive substances in victims of sexual assaults in Alicante province (Spain) during the years 2016-2020

Introducción: el empleo de drogas psicoactivas para facilitar una agresión sexual ha adquirido gran relevancia en estos últimos años. El objetivo del presente trabajo es ayudar a visibilizar este tipo de situaciones, estableciendo los criterios diagnósticos y así poder determinar la incidencia real de este tipo de delitos. Material y métodos: se ha realizado un estudio descriptivo retrospectivo de las víctimas de violencia sexual mediante el empleo de sustancias psicoactivas, atendidas por los médicos forenses del Instituto de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses de Alicante, en los años 2016 a 2020. Resultados: de los 702 casos estudiados de víctimas de violencia sexual, en 95 casos (13,5%) se cumplían los criterios de sospecha de sumisión química o delitos facilitados por sustancias psicoactivas. El perfil de la víctima es mujer (94,7%), de edad media 24,7 años. En la mayoría de los casos la violencia sexual fue cometida por un único agresor (80,6%), varón, conocido o recién conocido por la víctima y generalmente los hechos ocurrieron en fin de semana (54,8%). La víctima había consumido voluntariamente alcohol solo, o en combinación con drogas y/o medicamentos, inmediatamente antes de los hechos en la mayoría de los casos (88,5%). La situación de vulnerabilidad que genera este consumo puede ser aprovechado por el agresor para agredirla sexualmente (sumisión química oportunista). Los análisis químico-toxicológicos de las muestras analizadas en la sangre y la orina fueron positivos en un 85,3% de los casos. En casi la mitad de los casos fueron positivos a más de una sustancia (46,3%). Las más frecuentes encontradas fueron: alcohol (54,7%), cannabinoides (37,9%), benzodiacepinas (22,1%), cocaína (15,8%) y éxtasis (8,4%). En la mitad de los casos (50,5%), se obtuvieron hallazgos toxicológicos positivos inesperados de sustancias psicoactivas, que la víctima no admitía haber consumido voluntariamente.(AU)

Introduction: The use of psychoactive drugs to facilitate sexual assault has acquired great relevance in recent years. The objective of this work is to help make this type of situation visible, establishing diagnostic criteria and thus being able to determine the real incidence of this type of crime. Materials and methods: In order to determine the frequency and characteristics of victims of sexual assault with suspected chemical submission (SSQ), a retrospective descriptive study of sexual assaults facilitated by psychoactive substances has been carried out at the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Alicante in the years 2016-2020. Results: Among 702 cases studied, 95 (13.5%) met the criteria for inclusion in the probable DFSA (drug-facilitated sexual assault) group. The profile of the victim was a woman (95.4%) around 24 years old. In most cases, the sexual violence was committed by a single male aggressor, recently met or known by the victim, and generally these events happen on weekends. The victim had voluntarily consumed alcohol, drugs or psychotropic drugs immediately before the events in most cases (88,5%). This vulnerable state of the victim was used by the aggressor to sexually assault her (opportunistic DFSA). The toxicological analyses performed on blood and/or urine were positive in 85.3%. In almost half of them (46.3%), there was more than one substance found in the toxicological analyses. The most frequent substance found were: alcohol (54.7%), cannabinoids (37,9%), benzodiazepines (22.1%), cocaine (15.8%) and ecstasy or MDMA (8.4%). In half of the cases (50.5%), unexpected positive toxicological findings were obtained for psychoactive substances that the victim did not admit to having consumed voluntarily.(AU)

Combining collective and artificial intelligence for global health diseases diagnosis using crowdsourced annotated medical images.

Visual inspection of microscopic samples is still the gold standard diagnostic methodology for many global health diseases. Soil-transmitted helminth infection affects 1.5 billion people worldwide, and is the most prevalent disease among the Neglected Tropical Diseases. It is diagnosed by manual examination of stool samples by microscopy, which is a time-consuming task and requires trained personnel and high specialization. Artificial intelligence could automate this task making the diagnosis more accessible. Still, it needs a large amount of annotated training data coming from experts.In this work, we proposed the use of crowdsourced annotated medical images to train AI models (neural networks) for the detection of soil-transmitted helminthiasis in microscopy images from stool samples leveraging non-expert knowledge collected through playing a video game. We collected annotations made by both school-age children and adults, and we showed that, although the quality of crowdsourced annotations made by school-age children are sightly inferior than the ones made by adults, AI models trained on these crowdsourced annotations perform similarly (AUC of 0.928 and 0.939 respectively), and reach similar performance to the AI model trained on expert annotations (AUC of 0.932). We also showed the impact of the training sample size and continuous training on the performance of the AI models.In conclusion, the workflow proposed in this work combined collective and artificial intelligence for detecting soil-transmitted helminthiasis. Embedded within a digital health platform can be applied to any other medical image analysis task and contribute to reduce the burden of disease.

Risk Factors for Severe Anaphylaxis in Children.

OBJECTIVE: To identify risk factors associated with severe anaphylaxis in children. STUDY DESIGN: We carried out a multicenter prospective observational study including children less than 18 years old diagnosed with anaphylaxis in 7 Spanish pediatric emergency departments (EDs) between May 2016 and April 2018. Children were considered to have severe anaphylaxis if they met one or more of the following criteria: requirement for 2 or more doses of epinephrine, clinically important biphasic reaction, endotracheal intubation, intensive care unit admission, and/or death. RESULTS: We included 453 episodes of anaphylaxis. Of these, 61 were classified as severe anaphylaxis (13.5%, 95% CI [10.6-16.9]): 53 (11.7%) required more than 1 dose of epinephrine, and there were 14 (3.1%) cases of clinically important biphasic reactions, 2 (0.4%) intubations in the ED, and 6 (1.3%) admissions to the intensive care unit. No patients died. In the multivariable regression, we identified 5 independent risk factors for severe anaphylaxis: history of asthma (P = .002; OR 2.705, 95% CI [1.431-5.113]), onset of the symptoms less than 5 minutes after the allergen exposure (P = .002; OR 2.619, 95% CI [1.410-4.866]), non-well appearance (P = .005; OR 2.973, 95% CI [1.380-6.405]), tachycardia (P = .014; OR 2.339, 95% CI [1.191-4.959]), and hypotension (P = .036; OR 3.725, 95% CI [1.087-12.762]). CONCLUSIONS: Childhood anaphylaxis is usually well controlled in the ED. Children with a history of asthma, rapid onset of the symptoms, who are non-well appearing, or have tachycardia or hypotension upon arrival to the ED are more likely to have severe episodes.

Management of anaphylaxis in Spain: pediatric emergency care providers' knowledge.

BACKGROUND: Acute care providers must diagnose and treat patients with anaphylaxis. The objective was to analyze Spanish pediatric emergency departments' (ED) providers' knowledge of the international recommendations for the management of anaphylaxis. METHODS: A web-based survey including providers (both attending and residents) from seven Spanish pediatric EDs was conducted. To analyze the knowledge of the identification of anaphylaxis, we used the diagnostic criteria given by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Food Allergy and the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (2005). To analyze the management, we used the practical recommendations on the management of anaphylaxis published by the Joint Task Force on Practice Parameters (2014). RESULTS: A total of 425 physicians received the link and 337 (79.2%) completed the survey (138 attending, 76.6%; 199 residents, 81.2%, P<0.05). More than 90% of the providers correctly identified the anaphylaxis, except for not diagnosing it when reduced blood pressure is detected after exposure to a known allergen (69.7%) and misdiagnosis of anaphylaxis in patients with progressive urticaria with significant angioedema (65.9%). Nearly 100% identified epinephrine as the first-line treatment. Main failures of treatment were related to the position of the patient, the effect of medications in preventing a biphasic reaction, the recommended time to observe patients, and those related to the follow-up. No significant differences were found between attendings and residents. CONCLUSION: Even though the Spanish pediatric ED providers' knowledge of the management of anaphylaxis is good, certain improvement areas are identified in both the identification and the management of these patients.

Sumario ejecutivo de la guía de práctica clínica sobre el uso de las pruebas de liberación de interferón-gamma para el diagnóstico de infección tuberculosa / Executive Summary of the Guidelines for the Use of interferon-gamma Release Assays in the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis Infection

El uso de las pruebas de liberación de interferón-gamma para el diagnóstico de la infección tuberculosa está muy generalizado en España. Sin embargo, no se ha alcanzado un consenso respecto a su aplicación en situaciones clínicas específicas. Con el fin de redactar una guía de empleo en la práctica clínica, un grupo de expertos que incluyó a especialistas en enfermedades infecciosas, enfermedades respiratorias, microbiología, pediatría y medicina preventiva, junto con un experto en metodología, efectuaron una búsqueda sistemática en la literatura, sintetizaron los resultados, calificaron la calidad de las evidencias y formularon recomendaciones de acuerdo con la metodología Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations. Este documento es una guía basada en la evidencia para el empleo de las pruebas de liberación de interferón-gamma en el diagnóstico de la infección tuberculosa en pacientes en riesgo de padecer tuberculosis o en los que se sospeche enfermedad activa. La guía será aplicable tanto en atención primaria y especializada como en salud pública

Interferon-gamma release assays are widely used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in Spain. However, there is no consensus on their application in specific clinical scenarios. To develop a guide-line for their use, a panel of experts comprising specialists in infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, microbiology, pediatrics and preventive medicine, together with a methodologist, conducted a systematic literature search, summarized the findings, rated the quality of the evidence, and formulated recommendations following the Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations methodology. This document provides evidence-based guidance on the use of interferon-gamma release assays for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in patients at risk of tuberculosis or suspected of having active disease. The guidelines will be applicable to specialist and primary care, and public health

Executive Summary of the Guidelines for the Use of interferon-gamma Release Assays in the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis Infection. / Sumario ejecutivo de la guía de práctica clínica sobre el uso de las pruebas de liberación de interferón-gamma para el diagnóstico de infección tuberculosa.

Interferon-gamma release assays are widely used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in Spain. However, there is no consensus on their application in specific clinical scenarios. To develop a guide-line for their use, a panel of experts comprising specialists in infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, microbiology, pediatrics and preventive medicine, together with a methodologist, conducted a systematic literature search, summarized the findings, rated the quality of the evidence, and formulated recommendations following the Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations methodology. This document provides evidence-based guidance on the use of interferon-gamma release assays for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in patients at risk of tuberculosis or suspected of having active disease. The guidelines will be applicable to specialist and primary care, and public health.

Executive summary of the guidelines for the use of interferon-gamma release assays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection / Sumario Ejecutivo de la Guía de Práctica Clínica sobre el uso de las pruebas de liberación de interferón-gamma para el diagnóstico de infección tuberculosa

Interferon-gamma release assays are widely used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in Spain. However, there is no consensus on their application in specific clinical scenarios. To develop a guideline for their use, a panel of experts comprising specialists in infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, microbiology, pediatrics and preventive medicine, together with a methodologist, conducted a systematic literature search, summarized the findings, rated the quality of the evidence, and formulated recommendations following the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations) methodology. This document provides evidence-based guidance on the use of interferon-gamma release assays for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in patients at the risk of tuberculosis or suspected of having active disease. The guidelines will be applicable to specialist and primary care, and public health

Las técnicas de detección in vitro de interferón-gamma (IGRA, del inglés interferon-gamma release assays), están ampliamente implantadas para el diagnóstico de infección tuberculosa en España. Sin embargo, no hay consenso sobre su aplicación en diferentes escenarios clínicos. Para desarrollar una guía de práctica clínica sobre su uso, un grupo de trabajo compuesto por especialistas en enfermedades infecciosas, neumología, microbiología, pediatría y medicina preventiva, junto con un metodólogo, llevaron a cabo una búsqueda sistemática de la literatura, sintetizaron la evidencia y gradaron su calidad, y formularon las recomendaciones siguiendo el método GRADE (Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations). Este documento proporciona una guía basada en la evidencia para el uso de los IGRA para el diagnóstico de infección tuberculosa en pacientes en riesgo de tuberculosis o con sospecha de enfermedad activa. Esta guía es aplicable en la atención especializada y primaria, y salud pública

Executive summary of the guidelines for the use of interferon-γ release assays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection.

Interferon-gamma release assays are widely used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in Spain. However, there is no consensus on their application in specific clinical scenarios. To develop a guideline for their use, a panel of experts comprising specialists in infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, microbiology, pediatrics and preventive medicine, together with a methodologist, conducted a systematic literature search, summarized the findings, rated the quality of the evidence, and formulated recommendations following the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations of Assessment Development and Evaluations) methodology. This document provides evidence-based guidance on the use of interferon-gamma release assays for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection in patients at the risk of tuberculosis or suspected of having active disease. The guidelines will be applicable to specialist and primary care, and public health.

Use of interferon-gamma release assays to calculate the annual risk of tuberculosis infection.

The objective was to assess the annual risk of tuberculosis infection by means of tuberculin skin testing (TST) in children, evaluating whether QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFN-G-IT) could improve the accuracy. On the basis of the positive TST results, the global annual incidence was estimated at 0.78%, with an increase in the prevalence from 0.64% to 1.68% in 2 years. However, QFN-G-IT was only positive in 6 of the 25 children with positive TST. The confirmation of the positive TST results by QFN-G-IT provided more accurate annual incidence estimation.