ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge to the care of patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs). The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the care of RMDs patients and their health and well-being. This cross-sectional study involved 120 RMDs patients at the rheumatology department at Suez Canal University Hospital in Ismailia, Egypt, in July 2020. Patients were interviewed for sociodemographic and disease-related history. Further assessments were performed using Kessler 6-items, fears of COVID-19, and COV19-impact on quality of life scales. Rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus represented the majority of our sample of RMDs patients (72.5% and 19.2%, respectively). About 50% of patients reported experiencing limitations in the access to rheumatologic care, and a similar percentage had changed or discontinued their medications. Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs shortage and concerns about the increased risk of COVID-19 infection due to immunosuppressive drugs were the most frequently reported reasons for nonadherence. The percentage of patients with uncontrolled disease had significantly increased from 8.3% prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to 20% during the pandemic. About 60% of patients reported a high level of psychological distress. In conclusion, the pandemic negatively influenced mental health, quality of life, adherence to medications, access to rheumatology care, and the degree of disease control of RMDs patients.
ABSTRACT
Human health may depend on the environment and its compartments, which may include climatic factors. These climatic factors and their changes might impact on human health particularly the outbreak of pandemics like COVID-19. The combined stress resulted from climate changes and COVID-19 could be noticed in several countries especially in the developing countries. Malnutrition is considered one of the most important problems in the developing countries in particular under the droughts, flooding, and other climatic events. Malnutrition was aggravated under COVID-19 outbreak in these countries due to the closure of borders between countries, the crisis of global trade, and the global food insecurity. The biofortification process is the sustainable solution to overcome malnutrition, which included very recently using nano-nutrients as called nano-biofortification. The approach of nano-biofortification is a promising tool in producing biofortified edible plants, otherwise this tool still needs more studies to answer the open questions like which nano-nutrients can be used in nano-biofortification? Which recommended doses and crops are considered suitable candidates?
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has become a world wide pandemic since its first appearance at the end of the year 2019. Although some vaccines have already been announced, a new mutant version has been reported in UK. We certainly should be more careful and make further investigations to the virus spread and dynamics. This work investigates dynamics in Lotka-Volterra based Models of COVID-19. The proposed models involve fractional derivatives which provide more adequacy and realistic description of the natural phenomena arising from such models. Existence and boundedness of non-negative solution of the fractional model is proved. Local stability is also discussed based on Matignon's stability conditions. Numerical results show that the fractional parameter has effect on flattening the curves of the coexistence steady state. This interesting foundation might be used among the public health strategies to control the spread of COVID-19 and its mutated versions.