Clinical evidence of three traditional Chinese medicine drugs and three herbal formulas for COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the Chinese population.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread worldwide. Integrated Chinese and Western medicine have had some successes in treating COVID-19. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of three traditional Chinese medicine drugs and three herbal formulas (3-drugs-3-formulas) in patients with COVID-19. SEARCH STRATEGY: Relevant studies were identified from 12 electronic databases searched from their establishment to April 7, 2022. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-RCTs and cohort studies that evaluated the effects of 3-drugs-3-formulas for COVID-19. The treatment group was treated with one of the 3-drugs-3-formulas plus conventional treatment. The control group was treated with conventional treatment. DATA EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS: Two evaluators screened and selected literature independently, then extracted basic information and assessed risk of bias. The treatment outcome measures were duration of main symptoms, hospitalization time, aggravation rate and mortality. RevMan 5.4 was used to analyze the pooled results reported as mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence interval (CI) for continuous data and risk ratio (RR) with 95% CI for dichotomous data. RESULTS: Forty-one studies with a total of 13,260 participants were identified. Our analysis suggests that compared with conventional treatment, the combination of 3-drugs-3-formulas might shorten duration of fever (MD = -1.39; 95% CI: -2.19 to -0.59; P < 0.05), cough (MD = -1.57; 95% CI: -2.16 to -0.98; P < 0.05) and fatigue (MD = -1.36; 95% CI: -2.21 to -0.51; P < 0.05), decrease length of hospital stay (MD = -2.62; 95% CI -3.52 to -1.72; P < 0.05), the time for nucleic acid conversion (MD = -2.92; 95% CI: -4.26 to -1.59; P < 0.05), aggravation rate (RR = 0.49; 95% CI: 0.38 to 0.64; P < 0.05) and mortality (RR = 0.34; 95% CI: 0.19 to 0.62; P < 0.05), and increase the recovery rate of chest computerized tomography manifestations (RR = 1.22; 95% CI: 1.14 to 1.3; P < 0.05) and total effectiveness (RR = 1.24; 95% CI: 1.09 to 1.42; P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The 3-drugs-3-formulas can play an active role in treating all stages of COVID-19. No severe adverse events related to 3-drugs-3-formulas were observed. Hence, 3-drugs-3-formulas combined with conventional therapies have effective therapeutic value for COVID-19 patients. Further long-term high-quality studies are essential to demonstrate the clinical benefits of each formula. Please cite this article as: You LZ, Dai QQ, Zhong XY, Yu DD, Cui HR, Kong YF, Zhao MZ, Zhang XY, Xu QQ, Guan ZY, Wei XX, Zhang XC, Han SJ, Liu WJ, Chen Z, Zhang XY, Zhao C, Jin YH, Shang HC. Clinical evidence of three traditional Chinese medicine drugs and three herbal formulas for COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the Chinese population. J Integr Med. 2023; 21(5): 441-454.

Diagnostic value of BinaxNOW antigen card for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.

Rapid laboratory detection is remarkably crucial to diagnosing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection, due to whose outbreak causes to the world pandemic. The BinaxNOW antigen card (BinaxNOW) is a simple, effective, and cheap tool to detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The meta-analysis in this study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performance of BinaxNOW for SARS-CoV-2. The researchers independently retrieved the related databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library) before May 1st, 2021, and extracted the relevant data based on the early inclusion/exclusion criterion. Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Study-2 was used to evaluate the quality of the enrolled studies. Stata 16.0, Meta-DiSc 1.4, and Review Manager 5.3 were used to generate analytical data for the statistical analysis. 59 sets of data were identified from the seven studies included in this meta-analysis. The combined sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio, and their 95% confidence intervals were 0.77 (0.76 to 0.79), 0.99 (0.99 to 0.99), 65.72 (48.23 to 89.56), 0.23 (0.19 to 0.28), and 461.10 (281.55 to 755.13), respectively. The area under curve was 0.9910 in the summary receiver operating characteristic curve. BinaxNOW is beneficial for symptomatic patients' onset within 7 days. CT value and testing site may be the heterogeneity source of BinaxNOW accuracy. Moreover, this technology has an efficient performance for diagnosing COVID-19, especially in patients with heavy viral load. BinaxNOW may become a practical tool for large-scale or at-home use for COVID-19 in the post-pandemic era.Highlights● Pooled sensitivity with 0.77 and specificity with 0.99 in the BinaxNOW assay.● CT value and testing site may be the heterogeneity source of BinaxNOW accuracy.● BinaxNOW is beneficial for symptomatic patients' onset within 7 days.● BinaxNOW may become a practical tool for large-scale or at-home use for COVID-19.

On discrete time Beverton-Holt population model with fuzzy environment.

In this work, dynamical behaviors of discrete time Beverton-Holt population model with fuzzy parameters are studied. It provides a flexible model to fit population data. For three different fuzzy parameters and fuzzy initial conditions, according to a generalization of division (g-division) of fuzzy number, it can represent dynamical behaviors including boundedness, global asymptotical stability and persistence of positive solution. Finally, two examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results obtained.