Comparison of diagnostic performance of RT-qPCR, RT-LAMP and IgM/IgG rapid tests for detection of SARS-CoV-2 among healthcare workers in Brazil.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has become a major public health problem after the outbreak caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus. Great efforts to contain COVID-19 transmission have been applied worldwide. In this context, accurate and fast diagnosis is essential. METHODS: In this prospective study, we evaluated the clinical performance of three different RNA-based molecular tests - RT-qPCR (Charité protocol), RT-qPCR (CDC (USA) protocol) and RT-LAMP - and one rapid test for detecting anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG antibodies. RESULTS: Our results demonstrate that RT-qPCR using the CDC (USA) protocol is the most accurate diagnostic test among those evaluated, while oro-nasopharyngeal swabs are the most appropriate biological sample. RT-LAMP was the RNA-based molecular test with lowest sensitivity while the serological test presented the lowest sensitivity among all evaluated tests, indicating that the latter test is not a good predictor of disease in the first days after symptoms onset. Additionally, we observed higher viral load in individuals who reported more than 3 symptoms at the baseline. Nevertheless, viral load had not impacted the probability of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. CONCLUSION: Our data indicates that RT-qPCR using the CDC (USA) protocol in oro-nasopharyngeal swabs samples should be the method of choice to diagnosis COVID-19.

Longitudinal study of humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 of health professionals in Brazil: the impact of booster dose and reinfection on antibody dynamics (preprint)

The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has had a major impact on health systems. Vaccines have been shown to be effective in improving the clinical outcome of COVID-19, but they are not able to fully prevent infection and reinfection, especially that caused by new variants. Here, we tracked for 450 days the humoral immune response and reinfection in 52 healthcare workers from Brazil. Infection and reinfection were confirmed by RT-qPCR, while IgM and IgG antibody levels were monitored by rapid test. Of the 52 participants, 19 (36%) got reinfected during the follow-up period, all presenting mild symptoms. For all participants, IgM levels dropped sharply, with over 47% of them becoming seronegative by the 60th day. For IgG, 90% of the participants became seropositive within the first 30 days of follow-up. IgG antibodies also dropped after this period reaching the lowest level on day 270 (68.5{+/-}72.3, p<0.0001). Booster dose and reinfection increased the levels of both antibodies, with the interaction between them resulting in an increase in IgG levels of 130.3 units. Overall, our data indicate that acquired humoral immunity declines over time and suggests that IgM and IgG antibody levels are not associated with the prevention of reinfection.

Effect of sleep disorders on post-vaccination antibody response - A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objectives/Introduction: Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders have been related to a reduced or delayed antibody response following vaccination. However, studies in this field have provided inconsistent results, with some failing to show significant effects on antibody titers in these conditions. The possible reasons for the discrepancies on the results rely on methodological variability, including different sleeprelated conditions, diseases and time from vaccination to antibody assessment. This study intended to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of sleep deprivation and sleep disorders on antibody response after vaccination. Method(s): Literature searches were performed at PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, comprising two search domains, one related to sleep and other to vaccination. The records were screened in a twostep process (title and s, follow by full text analysis), by two independent reviewers. Eligibility criteria included individuals with previous diagnosis of a sleep disease or subjected to an experimental sleep deprivation schedule, which have undergone vaccination for a specific disease. The main outcome was the post-vaccinal antibody titers. The effects size for each article was calculated using standardized mean differences and the meta-analyses used the DerSimonian and Laird random effects model. Result(s): Out of 9009 identified records, six were included in the final sample. Among these, four were related to H1N1/influenza, one to hepatitis and one to COVID-19. Three studies evaluated the effects of sleep deprivation, two were related to obstructive sleep apnea and one was related to insomnia. The date since vaccination to antibody measurement varied from five days to one month. The results demonstrated a non-significant reduction in antibody titers due to sleep disorders (SDM: -0.206;CI95%: -0.783 to 0.071;p = 0.144). Conclusion(s): The results demonstrate that sleep disorders and sleep deprivation altogether do not lead into a significant reduction in the antibody titers after vaccination. However, the studies included are subjected to substantial methodological heterogeneity, and it is possible that significant effects would appear in more specific conditions (such as for specific sleep disorders, diseases and time points after vaccination).

Innovative Educational Approach in Healthcare-Associated Infection Prevention and Control. Results of a European Study

Prevent and control healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is a priority in healthcare assistance, not only due to present COVID-19 pandemic. Annually, around 3.2 million patients are affected by one of these infections and it is estimated that without controlling them, by 2050, 10 million more people could die every year, with especial relevance among elderly with infectious situations representing a third of mortality in people over 65 years old. Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in healthcare area have an important role in this panorama, by preparing students to be future professionals, stimulating them to have an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to today’s real-life challenges. A mixed-methods research was conducted, at European level (in Portugal, Finland, Poland and Spain), to facilitate learning of good practices on HAIs prevention and control while developing innovative solutions. 1475 participants were enrolled, from all partner HEI: 79 professors and mentors were interviewed (individual or focus group), 1326 final year nursing students made a self-report inventory (application of InovSafeCare Scale) and 70 students participated on focus group (agile piloting of the Model). The result of this research is a pedagogical model that mixes dimensions and methods that take nursing students closer to the demands of HAIs prevention and control and capacitates them to transfer knowledge to work settings with an innovative and entrepreneurial perspective – the InovSafeCare Model. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A TOGAF-based framework for the development of sustainable product-service systems

Companies around the world have sought to produce sustainable products and services with less impact. The impact produced by the COVID-19 pandemic showed that the supply Systems Product-Service (PSS) with an emphasis on sustainability has grown to become one of the main strategic approaches used. The existence of an automated framework that can assist designers in creating a PSS that encompasses the preparation of products and services simultaneously, from its initial stages, has become extremely important. Thus, the objective of this article is to develop a Framework capable of organizing the necessary information for the development of product and service in an integrated way, using the development of information architectures rationale, such as TOGAF, so that in all stages there is fluidity and there are no duplicity terms in its development. The use of information architecture development methods to develop the PSS structure presents a great opportunity to carry out its mapping, thus ensuring that the model is suitable to represent real-world situations. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Applying Exploratory Testing and Ad-Hoc Usability Inspection to Improve the Ease of Use of a Mobile Power Consumption Registration App: An Experience Report

As the number of mobile devices has increased, software development teams have focused on releasing mobile applications, allowing users to carry out transactions, access information and improve their lifestyle more efficiently. Nevertheless, even when providing useful means for carrying out daily tasks, users report dissatisfaction or frustration when using these applications. For energy companies, mobile applications that fail to provide both usefulness and ease of use may reduce their adoption and an increase in the company’s workload, as users will require company workers to solve problems they could solve on their own. In this paper, we report how we applied exploratory testing and ad-hoc usability inspection to identify improvement opportunities during the development of a mobile application that would allow users to measure their power consumption, supporting social distancing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. After identified a set of functional and usability problems, the development team redesigned the application, which was perceived as both useful and easy to use from the point of view of the managers that requested it. Also, we report lessons learned that are useful for practitioners willing to replicate this experience. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Chatbot Solution for Self-Reading Energy Consumption via Chatting Applications

To mitigate financial loss and follow the recommended sanitary measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reading, a method in which a consumer reads and reports his own energy consumption, has been presented as an efficient alternative for power companies. In such context, this work presents a solution for self-reading via chatbot in chatting applications. This solution is under development as part of a research and development (R&D) project. It is integrated with a method based on image processing that automatically reads the energy consumption and recognizes the identification code of a meter for validation purposes. Furthermore, all processes utilize cognitive services from the IBM Watson platform to recognize intentions in the dialog with the consumers. The dataset used to validate the proposed method for self-reading contains examples of analogical and digital meters used by Equatorial Energy group. Preliminary results presented accuracies of 77.20% and 84.30%, respectively, for the recognition of complete reading sequences and identification codes in digital meters and accuracies of 89% and 95.20% in the context of analogical meters. Considering both meter types, the method obtains an accuracy per digit of 97%. The proposed method was also evaluated with UFPR-AMR public dataset and achieves a result comparable to the state of the art. © 2021, Brazilian Society for Automatics--SBA.

Bibliometric analysis of brazilian production on COVID-19

Objective: to analyze the Brazilian scientific production on COVID-19. Method: bibliographic, descriptive, quantitative and bibliometric analysis research. The source of information was PubMed, with a period between November 17, 2019 and May 18, 2020. RSudio and VOSviewer software, bibliometrix and biblioshiny bibliometric packages, and Word Cloud Art were used for data analysis. Results: the Brazilian authors identified in the 248 articles are mostly from the medical area, working in institutions in the Southeast and Northeast regions of Brazil and maintain international collaboration, mainly with the United States, Italy and Canada. There is publication in several journals, especially those of Brazilian origin. The keywords and published articles refer to biomedical themes. Conclusion: Brazilian scientific production lacks researches on COVID-19 that reflect on the impacts of the pandemic on society, workers and health economy in Brazil. © 2020 Universidade Federal da Bahia. All rights reserved.