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Introduction Children with cancer are immunocompromised due to the disease per se or anticancer therapy. Children are believed to be at a lower risk of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease.Objective This study analyzed the outcome of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in children with cancer.Materials and Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on patients (<= 14 years) with cancer attending the pediatric oncology services of our institute who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 infection and those who had COVID-19 disease between August 2020 and May 2021. Real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction performed on the nasopharyngeal swab identified the SARS-CoV-2 infection. The primary endpoints were clinical recovery, interruption of cancer treatment, and associated morbidity and mortality.Results Sixty-six (5.7%) of 1,146 tests were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Fifty-two (79%) and 14 (21%) patients had hematolymphoid and solid malignancies. Thirty-two (48.5%) patients were asymptomatic. A mild-moderate, severe, or critical disease was observed in 75% (18/24), 12.5% (3/24), and 12.5% (3/24) of the symptomatic patients. The "all-cause" mortality was 7.6% (5/66), with only one (1.5%) death attributable to COVID-19. Two (3%) patients required ventilation. Two (3%) patients had a delay in cancer diagnosis secondary to COVID-19 infection. Thirty-eight (57.6%) had a disruption in anticancer treatment.Conclusion Children with cancer do not appear to be at an increased risk of severe illness due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our findings substantiate continuing the delivery of nonintensive anticancer treatment unless sick. However, SARS-CoV-2 infection interrupted anticancer therapy in a considerable proportion of children.
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The development of a cryptocurrency cannot occur without the use of a vital piece of technology known as blockchain. It is a distributed ledger that has progressed to the point where they are now even more applicable and beneficial. This is due to the passage of time and the development of many sectors. These days, blockchain technology is being employed in certain ways throughout all the industries. In this study, each and every significant attribute and weakness is discussed and analyzed. We have also conducted a literature analysis on blockchain-related topics and highlighted some of the most current sectors in which blockchain technology has found the greatest utility. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Introduction: Because of the limited donor pool, transplants are being done across the blood group and even HLA incompatibility barriers. But this comes at the cost of increased immunosuppression and the side effects. Effect of this intensified immunosuppression on the incidence of post transplant infections and the type of infection has not been studied extensively. Methods: We retrospectively analysed the incidence of infection in ABO incompatible transplants (ABOi) and compared it with propensity matched cohort of ABO compatible transplants(ABOc) over the same timeframe i.e. 2011 to April 2019. using hospital eHIS record system. Patients were matched with 1:2 ratio (ABOi: ABOc) for age (<60yr, >60yrs),sex, number of previous transplants, pretransplant infections, history of prior immunosuppression, diabetic status, NODAT, and induction agent used. Desensitization protocol for ABO incompatible transplant includes rituximab with double filtration plasmapheresis, plasmapharesis or immunoadsorption to target anti blood group titre of 8. Patient with high immunological risk (e.g.second transplant, HLA incompatible) receive ATG induction while others receive basiliximab induction. Valganciclovir prophylaxis was given only in patients with ATG induction. Results: [Formula presented] [Formula presented] During the study period 89 patients underwent ABOi transplants which were compared with 178 ABOc transplants. (Table1)Mean follow up duration was 50.45months (SD 26.8) in ABOi group and 49.47months (SD28.7) in ABOc group. 17% patients lost to follow up with their last follow up being more than 2 years before. Incidence of overall infections was similar in both the groups (59% (43/89) Vs 44.3% (79/178);p=0.6). (Table2) Incidence of urinary tract infections(UTI)was significantly more in ABOi group vs ABOc group.(23.5% (21/89) vs 11.79% (21/178);p=0.019). Cytomegalovirus infections (CMV) were significantly more in ABOi group 12.3% (11/89) as compared to ABOc group 5% (9/187) (p=0.04). All the patients with CMV infection were CMV IgG positive pretransplant except 2, one from ABOc group who was CMV IgG negative and another from ABOi group who’s pretransplant CMV serology was unavailable. There was no significant difference in incidence of fungal infection, pneumocystis infection, diarrheal infections (other than CMV),pneumonia (other than CMV, PCP, fungal), Herpes, BKV infection. Incidence of post-transplant tuberculosis (3.3% (3/89) Vs 2.8% (5/178);p=1.0) and SARS COV2 infections (12.3% (11/89) vs 9% (16/178);p=0.39 was similar in both the groups. Patient survival was similar in both the groups i.e.95.5% but death censored graft loss was significantly more in ABOi group 0.9% (8/89) as compared ABOc group 0.3% (5/178) p=0.03. Reason of graft loss in all the patients was immunological and not infection. Infection was cause for death in three ABOi patients and four ABOc patients. Conclusions: Overall incidence of infections in ABOi transplants was similar to Abo compatible transplant. Incidence of UTIs and CMV infections were significantly higher in ABOi group. No conflict of interest
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Pandemic “COVID 19” is affecting almost all the countries across the globe. This spread through body fluids, hence people are advised to follow social distancing. As a result, most of the people are staying at homes and not visiting their places of work, markets, restaurants, public places, etc., resulting in slowing down of economy. Many people have migrated from urban to rural areas for employment. The current level of infrastructure, i.e. Transport, roads, parking, markets, cinema halls, restaurants/hotels, industries/factories, institutions, etc., is not required and only hospitals, police, communication, and essential services are required. Demand for Water/electricity/food and related paraphernalia has been reduced or finished. This trend is expected to continue for few more years, as more such virus attacks are expected in near future as well as due to low economic activities. This is resulting in a change in urban built environment as more urban spaces are becoming free. With this trend, future cities are going to be different than the present ones with less built-up spaces and less demand for urban infrastructure. An analysis of future urban built environment has been done in this paper. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Background:: 2020 brought an epidemic with it which already have taken a lot of live all around the globe. The vaccine of this disease named COVID-19 is still under trails but there are some precautionary measures issued by WHO for people to keep themselves safe from getting infected and transfer it forward. However, some people are not taking this seriously and due to that government has also issued some rules and regulations for people who are not following the precautionary measures. Methodology:: In this study, we worked on how to find defaulters in real time world and identifying them between the group of number of people and ask them to follow the precautionary measures and if necessary, take actions against them. A convolutional neural network model was created and was implemented in finding the defaulters from a group of people. Results:: The model worked quite well in identifying people with and without face masks and also whether the people are following social distancing or not simultaneously through the webcam. The model was able to detect multiple number of people at once and also calculate distance between them and checking whether they are wearing masks or not. Practical Applications:: The research can be used in various places like factories, shops, roads, and other public places. In the areas where a number of people are working together, during this time it has become a necessity to have precautions. But due to some people’s negligence it has become necessary for government bodies to keep check on these people and take necessary actions required and ensure the safety of others and also them. Therefore, it can used in surveillance system in the entire cities to keep check. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Online diffusion of misinformation has gained extreme attention in the research from past few years. Moreover, during ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the proliferation of misinformation became more prominent. In this paper, a comparison of two feature engineering techniques, namely term frequency–inverse document frequency (tf-idf) and word embeddings (doc2vec), is done over different machine learning classifiers. A Web scraper is developed for fact-checking Web site, Snopes.com, to extract labeled news related to Covid-19. Although the size of dataset is less, the body content under headlines contains large amount of text. Therefore, the model works well with both the feature engineering techniques and machine learning algorithms. Apparently, we obtained best accuracy of 95.38% with tf-idf on decision tree and same accuracy of 90.77% using doc2vec on support vector machine and logistic regression machine learning classifier. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.