BioMed research international
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Recently, a large-scale novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) outbreak swept China. As of Feb. 9, 2020, a total of 40,260 patients have been diagnosed with NCP, and 23,589 patients were suspected to have infected by the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which puts forward a great challenge for public health and clinical treatment in China. Until now, we are in the high-incidence season of NCP. Thus, the analysis of the transmissibility change of NCP and its potential factors may provide a reliable reference for establishing effective prevention and control strategies. ⋯ The current prevention and control measures have effectively reduced the transmissibility of COVID-19; however, R0t is still larger than the threshold 1. The results show that the government adopting the Wuhan lockdown strategy plays an important role in restricting the potential infected persons in Wuhan outflow from the epidemic area and avoiding a nationwide spread by quickly controlling the potential infection in Wuhan. Meanwhile, since Jan. 18, 2020, the people successively accessed COVID-19-related information via the Internet, which may help to effectively implement the government's prevention and control strategy and contribute to reducing the transmissibility of NCP. Therefore, ongoing travel restriction and public health awareness remain essential to provide a foundation for controlling the outbreak of COVID-19.
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Knowledge of the sensitivities of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibody tests beyond 35 days after the clinical onset of COVID-19 is insufficient. We aimed to describe positivity rate of SARS-CoV-2 assays employing three different measurement principles over a prolonged period. Two hundred sixty-eight samples from 180 symptomatic patients with COVID-19 and a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test followed by serological investigation of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were included. ⋯ The confirmation of negative results using an orthogonal algorithm with another assay provided lower NPVs than the single assays. When interpreting results from SARS-CoV-2 tests, the pretest probability, time of blood draw, and assay characteristics must be carefully considered. An orthogonal testing approach increases the accuracy of positive, but not negative, predictions.
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To investigate the immune status of people who previously had COVID-19 infections, we recruited two-week postrecovery patients and analyzed circulating cytokine and lymphocyte subsets. We measured levels of total lymphocytes, CD3+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, CD19+ B cells, and CD56+ NK cells and the serum concentrations of interleukin- (IL-) 1, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and interferon gamma (IFN-γ) by flow cytometry. We found that in most postrecovery patients, levels of total lymphocytes (66.67%), CD3+ T cells (54.55%), CD4+ T cells (54.55%), CD8+ T cells (81.82%), CD19+ B cells (69.70%), and CD56+ NK cells (51.52%) remained lower than normal, whereas most patients showed normal levels of IL-2 (100%), IL-4 (80.88%), IL-6 (79.41%), IL-10 (98.53%), TNF-α (89.71%), IFN-γ (100%), and IL-17 (97.06%). ⋯ By ROC curve analysis, postrecovery decreases in lymphocyte subsets and increases in cytokines were identified as independent predictors of rehabilitation efficacy. These findings indicate that the immune system gradually recovers following COVID-19 infection; however, the sustained hyperinflammatory response for more than 14 days suggests a need to continue medical observation following discharge from the hospital. Longitudinal studies of a larger cohort of recovered patients are needed to fully understand the consequences of the infection.
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In our study, we aimed to screen the risk factors that affect overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in adult glioma patients and to develop and evaluate nomograms. ⋯ We developed nomograms to predict 3- and 5-year OS rates and 3- and 5-year CSS rates in adult high-grade glioma patients. Both the training set and the validation set showed good calibration and validation, indicating the clinical applicability of the nomogram and good predictive results.
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Comparative Study
A Comparative Study of 2 Different Segmentation Methods of ADC Histogram for Differentiation Genetic Subtypes in Lower-Grade Diffuse Gliomas.
To evaluate the diagnostic performance of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram parameters for differentiating the genetic subtypes in lower-grade diffuse gliomas and explore which segmentation method (ROI-1, the entire tumor ROI; ROI2, the tumor ROI excluding cystic and necrotic portions) performs better. ⋯ ADC values analyzed by the histogram method could help to classify the genetic subtypes in lower-grade diffuse gliomas, no matter which ROI method was used. Extracting cystic and necrotic portions from the entire tumor lesions is preferable for evaluating the difference of the intratumoral heterogeneity and classifying IDH-wild tumors, but not significantly beneficial to predicting the 1p19q genotype in the lower-grade gliomas.