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Microblogging sites such as Twitter play an important role in dealing with various mass emergencies including natural disasters and pandemics. The FIRE 2022 track on Information Retrieval from Microblogs during Disasters (IRMiDis) focused on two important tasks – (i) to detect the vaccine-related stance of tweets related to COVID-19 vaccines, and (ii) to detect reporting of COVID-19 symptom in tweets. © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
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This review is aimed to explore the health beneficial effects of probiotics which are live microorganisms that provide a positive health influence on humans when taken in sufficient quantity. Lactic acid bacteria, bifidobacteria, and yeast are frequently used as probiotics. These health-beneficial bacteria could compete with pathogens and modulate the gut microbiota, and exhibit immunomodulatory, anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, and anti-cancer activities which are discussed in this review. Moreover, recent studies showed that probiotics could neutralize COVID-19 infections. Hence, probiotics have become an alternative to several drugs including antibiotics. In addition, probiotic efficacy also depends on the delivery system as the delivery agents help the bacteria to survive in the harsh environment of the human gut. Considering these health benefits of probiotics, now it has been applied to different food materials which are designated as functional food. This review explored a portrait of the beneficial effects of probiotics on human health.Copyright © 2022 The Author(s)
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According to mid-June 2020, the abrupt escalation of coronavirus reported widespread fear and crossed 16 million confirmed cases. To fight against this growth, clinical imaging is recommended, and for illustration, X-Ray images can be applied for opinion. This paper categorizes chest X-ray images into three classes- COVID-19 positive, normal, and pneumonia affected. We have used a CNN model for analysis, and hyperparameters are used to train and optimize the CNN layers. Swarm-based artificial intelligent algorithm - Grey Wolf Optimizer algorithm has been used for further analysis. We have tested our proposed methodology, and comparative analysis has been done with two openly accessible dataset containing COVID- 19 affected, pneumonia affected, and normal images. The optimized CNN model features delicacy, insight, values of F1 scores of 97.77, 97.74, 96.24 to 92.86, uniqueness, and perfection, which are better than models at the leading edge of technology. © 2022 IEEE.
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Background: The current pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 due to viral infections by SARS-CoV-2 has now become associated with severe commotion on global healthcare and the economy. Objective(s): In this extreme situation, when vaccine or effective new drugs against COVID-19 are still not available, the only quick and feasible therapeutic alternative would be the drug repurpos-ing approach. Method(s): In the present work, in silico screening of some anti-viral and antiprotozoal drugs was performed based on docking using Autodock. Result(s): Two known anti-viral drugs, sorivudine and noricumazole B, are predicted to bind to the active site of the viral proteases, namely cysteine-like protease or 3CL protease (3CLpro) and pa-pain-like protease (PLpro), respectively, with a highly favorable free energy of binding. Further, the promising molecules were subjected for checking their activity on other molecular targets in SARS-CoV-2 like spike protein S1, RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), and angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. But the compounds were found non-effective on the rest of the molecular targets. Conclusion(s): Sorivudine alone or a combination of sorivudine and noricumazole B may be adminis-tered to impede viral replication, though the predicted drug likeliness of noricumazole B is not much satisfactory. These observations are solely based on the results from blind docking with protein molecules and need to be further corroborated with experimental results.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.
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BACKGROUND: Considering the heavy toll taken by COVID- 19 pandemic, the understanding of the epidemiological parameters as well as various risk factors is crucial for future preparedness and tackling the pandemic in a more effective manner. We wanted to study the socio-demographic correlates of COVID -19 cases in Assam, India. Also to find the relationship of clinical status of COVID -19 cases with co- morbidities and with substance use. METHODS: An institution-based cross-sectional study was undertaken from 1st April 2020 to 31st August 2020. Out of the total 12 COVID Care Centres / hospitals that had been established in Kamrup and Kamrup Metro districts of Assam, 6 were randomly selected. A total of 3000 patients were interviewed over telephone by using an android-based application;on or after discharge from the centres, while patient was put on mandatory quarantine. The patients were interviewed on various socio-demographic variables, co-morbidities and substance use behaviour. Categorical variables are expressed as percentages and the continuous variables are expressed as mean +or- standard deviation. t-test and chi-square test were used for continuous and categorical variables respectively. RESULTS: Mean age of moderate and severe cases were 55.10 and 55.9 years respectively. Smoking and use of alcohol were significantly associated with severity of symptoms. Diabetes, hypertension and co-existing lung diseases were found to be associated with status of symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Epidemiological risk factors like age has to be relooked. Primary prevention on risk factors of non-communicable diseases proved to be crucial in prevention of severity of communicable pandemic like COVID-19. Further studies are required to enhance the knowledge on this aspect.
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Microblogging sites such as Twitter play an important role in dealing with various mass emergencies including natural disasters and pandemics. Over the last several years, the track on Information Retrieval from Microblogs during Disasters (IRMiDis), organized as part of the FIRE conference series, has provided annotated datasets for developing ML/NLP techniques for utilizing microblogs for various practical tasks that would help authorities better deal with disaster situations. In particular, the FIRE 2022 IRMiDis track focused on two important tasks-(i) to detect the vaccine-related stance of tweets related to COVID-19 vaccines, and (ii) to detect reporting of COVID-19 symptom in tweets. © 2022 Owner/Author.
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Introduction: Hybrid Problem-Based Learning (h-PBL) is a type of teaching-learning technique that incorporates both in-person learning and virtual learning via hybrid classroom tools. It reportedly increases student engagement, positively impact their learning process and improve communication skills. During Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) times, its applicability was further enhanced as it allowed the flexibility of teaching as well as learning from home to both teachers and students. Aim: To assess the perception and experience of 2nd phase MBBS students after undergoing training by the h-PBL method. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 2nd phase MBBS students in the Department of Microbiology at College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital, Kolkata from 15th March to 14th April 2022. A total of 111 students of 2nd phase MBBS of the college gave an informed consent to be part of the study. All inductees underwent a structured training by h-PBL technique following which their perception and experience about the exercise was sought via questionnaire. Data were presented in frequency and percentage. Association between mean scores of male and female participants was calculated by Chi-square test. Results: Out of the 111 participants, 58 (52.2%) were male and 53 (47.8%) were female with mean age of 19.5±0.5 years (range 18-22 years). The h-PBL technique was perceived to be motivating for self-directed learning by 97 (85.6%) of the respondents. A total of 107 (96.4%) students agreed that h-PBL is more effective than traditional teaching for acquiring both theoretical and practical knowledge, learning and understanding topics correctly and also identifying and rectifying their deficiencies in knowledge and skills. More than 90% participants (102 of 111) felt that h-PBL has more potential than traditional teaching to establish fruitful student-teacher interaction and provide better feedback opportunities. Overall student satisfaction in our study showed 96.4% agreement (107 of 111). Conclusion: The students considered h-PBL model to be better than traditional teaching to help them acquire theoretical knowledge and practical skills. They also felt that it improved their communication skills, teamwork ethics and motivated them to undertake self-directed learning.
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SESSION TITLE: Late Breaking Chest Infections Posters SESSION TYPE: Original Investigation Posters PRESENTED ON: 10/18/2022 01:30 pm - 02:30 pm PURPOSE: Initial reports of COVID-19 autopsies revealed significant evidence of micro and macrovascular thrombosis. Due to concern for increased thrombotic events, many institutions implemented anticoagulation (AC) protocols for hospitalized patients. The study’s objective is to evaluate disease progression in patients treated with therapeutic anticoagulation vs. prophylactic anticoagulation in noncritical COVID-19 hospitalized patients. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia between March 1-May 1, 2020. Inclusion criteria was any adult patient directly admitted to non-intensive care setting for radiologically confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia. T-test was performed for the continuous variables with normal distribution. Wilcoxon-rank-sum test for non-parametric groups. Chi-squared test for categorical variables. P-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Overall, 81 (34%) received therapeutic AC, and 159 (66%) subjected received prophylactic AC. The clinical characteristics of the therapeutic group included: average age 57.8 (vs. 55.7), 77.78% male (vs. 72.92%), 40.74% obese (vs. 37.92%), 64.74% had hypertension (vs. 40.88%), 44.44% had Diabetes Mellitus (vs. 37.92%) and 11.11% had chronic kidney disease (vs. 13.84%). Initial inflammatory markers were higher in therapeutic group vs. prophylactic, including D-dimer (845 vs 361ng/dL), Ferritin (918.5 vs. 632ng/mL), and CRP (20 vs. 11.2mg/dL). The average length of stay (LOS) of the therapeutic group was 10 days (vs. 7 for prophylactic), and a higher number of patients required mechanical ventilation (36 vs. 23), and hemodialysis (18 vs. 6). A higher number of adverse events (bleeding) was noticed in the therapeutic group (13.58% vs. 2.52%) with a p-value of <0.001. Higher odds of In-Hospital mortality observed in therapeutic group subjects with Hypertension (OR=5.41), chronic kidney disease (OR= 4.08), and lung disease (OR= 2.87) with a p-value of <0.05. CONCLUSIONS: In noncritically ill patients with COVID-19, treatment with therapeutic AC was related to greater LOS, requiring mechanical ventilation, hemodialysis, and adverse effects compared to prophylactic AC. We also observed a significantly higher D-dimer, ferritin, and CRP in the therapeutic group. RCT performed by ACTIV-4a investigators demonstrated increased organ support-free days in the therapeutic group, contrary to our study, which showed increased dependence of respiratory support and hemodialysis. Our therapeutic group patients appear to have higher comorbidities and significantly elevated initial inflammatory markers compared to the prophylactic group, which may explain these differences. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Finally, our study supports the use of therapeutic anticoagulation depending on the patient overall clinical scenario. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Adebola Adetiloye No relevant relationships by Jennifer Arzu No relevant relationships by Kuldeep Ghosh No relevant relationships by Gabriel Ibarra no disclosure on file for Armeen Poor;No relevant relationships by Ingrid Portillo No relevant relationships by Fernando Quesada Mata No relevant relationships by Natoushka Trenard No relevant relationships by Julio Valencia Manrique
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Nanoparticle (NP)-based colorimetric methods are extensively used for the rapid detection of environmental contaminants, different substances and SARS-CoV-2 in various fields such as environmental science, virology, pollution research, and the food industry, as well as biomedicine. Colorimetric sensors exhibit high sensitivity and selectivity, are easy to handle, portable, safe for screening purposes and can be visualized by the naked eye. Herein, the colorimetric sensing approaches of the two most commonly used metallic NPs, i.e., gold (Au) and silver (Ag), and their physicochemical methods are discussed, as metallic NPs show good efficiency due to their unique optical and chemical properties. This review summarizes the progress on colorimetric sensors based on metallic NPs as sensors and their applications, elucidating the utility and superior features of metallic-NP-based colorimetric assay for the detection of different environmental contaminants, biomolecules and SARS-CoV-2 in the environmental as well as human biological samples. An outlook with respect to the trends and future development of the proposed sensors is also provided.
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Microblogging sites such as Twitter play an important role in dealing with various mass emergencies including natural disasters and pandemics. The FIRE2021 track on Information Retrieval from Microblogs during Disasters (IRMiDis) focused on two important tasks - (i) to identify claims or fact-checkable tweets, which is the first step towards verifying information posted on social media, and (ii) to detect the vaccine-related stance of tweets related to COVID-19 vaccines. © 2021 Owner/Author.
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Introduction: COVID-19 is an infection caused by severe-acute-respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2).1 Many recent reports have shown an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE)4-5. Despite therapeutic anticoagulation with elevated D-dimer is widely described7, data on post-discharge prophylactic anticoagulation is limited.Case report: A 52-year-old female presented with 1-day mid-sternal chest pain and difficulty breathing. Her medical history included type-2-Diabetes Mellitus, obesity, and a hospital admission 4 weeks prior for COVID-19. She received Ceftriaxone, Azithromycin, Hydroxychloroquine, and prophylactic anticoagulation. She remained stable, with no fever or oxygen requirements and was discharged home to selfquarantine. She returned to the hospital, describing pain as sharp, constant, mild, radiating to left chest and back, aggravating on lying down and alleviating on leaning forward. Physical exam was normal, with no tachycardia, tachypnea, or hypoxemia. D-dimer was elevated (6834ng/dL), with normal troponin-T and pro Btype natriuretic peptide. In light of the findings, a contrasted Chest-CT was performed, showing a saddle pulmonary embolus (PE) in left pulmonary artery and non-obstructing thrombus in right main pulmonary artery. Electrocardiogram showed sinus rhythm and right-bundle-branch block, but no “S1Q3T3 pattern”.Patient was admitted to ICU and received enoxaparin. COVID-19 was negative. She remained hemodynamically stable. Lower extremities venous duplex scan was negative for DVT, echocardiogram reported normal ventricular function and dilation of inferior vena cava, consistent with elevated right atrial pressure. Patient was discharged on apixaban.Discussion: Several COVID-19 case-studies have highlighted the association with VTE4-5. During SARSCoV-1 epidemic the reported incidence of DVT and PE was 20% and 11% respectively10. The underlying pathophysiology is probably related to excessive inflammatory response “cytokine storm” and microvascular thrombosis. It is known that infections, either viral, bacterial or fungal can activate immune-thrombotic pathways as initial inflammatory response. However, in COVID-19, such response is disproportioned. McGonagle6 described that the tropism for angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 expressed on type-II pneumocytes and the proximity of these cells to vasculature, combined with the aforementioned inflammation may play the main role. Is COVID-19 a risk factor for PE at the recovery phase of the disease? When are the patients at the highest risk for VTE? Should COVID-19 PE be treated as provoked? Can D-dimer be relied upon as indicator for anticoagulation initiation in these settings? and if so, at what levels? Should COVID-19 patients be discharged on prophylactic anticoagulation? As more patients are being treated, COVID-19's role as risk factor for VTE in the recovery is still unclear.
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Introduction: SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, was first identified in December 2019 and declared a pandemic by the WHO in March 2020. Knowledge about COVID-19 is growing exponentially, but long-term pulmonary outcomes and factors influencing the development of fibrosis, such as intubation status, remain uncertain. We present three patients with no previous underlying pulmonary disease who developed post-ARDS fibrosis secondary to COVID-19 and continue to be severely impaired six months after initial hospitalization. Case Series: Three patients developed post-ARDS pulmonary fibrosis secondary to COVID-19 within one month of acute infection. Two males and one female, aged 56 to 75, were admitted 4 to 7 days after symptom onset and required ICU admission. One patient required 12 days of mechanical ventilation and was managed with noninvasive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) for 15 days and one was managed with HFNC for 37 days. One patient receiving oxygenation via HFNC and oxymask developed pneumomediastinum on day 30 of admission and was managed conservatively. All patients demonstrated characteristic bilateral ground-glass opacities on CT chest and follow up scans showed traction-bronchiectasis with diffuse fibrotic changes. C-reactive protein level on admission ranged from 41.22 to 30.79, and all patients received systemic corticosteroids along with therapeutic anticoagulation. All patients met criteria for home oxygen on discharge. Discussion: Post-ARDS pulmonary fibrosis in COVID-19 appears to be multifactorial. Possible outcome predictors identified include: advanced age, illness severity, length of ICU stay, mechanical ventilation, smoking, and chronic alcoholism. While the mechanism remains uncertain, virus-induced cell injury and inflammatory mediators may be responsible for the accelerated lung damage observed. Management has evolved over the course of the pandemic from emphasis on early intubation to maximal use of non-invasive pressure ventilation, taking into consideration the potential harm associated with patient self-inflicted lung injury versus ventilator induced injury. Our case series demonstrates three patients with varying comorbidities and elevated inflammatory markers, who received steroids and therapeutic anticoagulation. All patients had similar clinical outcomes irrespective of intubation status. Conclusion: Intubation status did not appear to have an impact on progression to post-ARDS pulmonary fibrosis in our case series of three patients. All patients developed fibrosis and continued to experience severe dyspnea requiring home oxygen six months after acute infection. Long-term observational cohort studies are required to better establish if mechanical ventilation is a predictor of post-ARDS pulmonary fibrosis from COVID-19.
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On-going global pandemic COVID-19 has spread all over the world and has led to more than 1.97 million deaths till date. Natural compounds may be useful to protecting health in this perilous condition. Mechanism of shuttle entry of SARS-COV-2 virus is by interaction with viral spike protein with human angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE-2) receptor. To explore potential natural therapeutics, 213 important phytochemicals of nine medicinal plants Aconitum heterophyllum, Cassia angustifolia, Cymbopogon fl exuosus, Cymbopogon martinii, Nux vomica, Phyllanthus urinaria, Swertia chirayita, Justicia adhatoda, Vetiveria zizanioides were selected for in-silico molecular docking against the spike protein of SARS-COV-2 and compared with recently prescribed drug chloroquine, ramdesivir, lopinavir and hydroxychloroquine. Results revealed that rhamnocitrin of P. urinaria, 1,5-dihydroxy-3,8-dimethoxyxanthone of S. chirayita and laevojunenol of V. zizanioides potentially binds with the receptor binding site of SARS-COV-2 spike glycoprotein and more robustly destabilized the RBD-ACE-2 binding over chloroquine, ramdesivir, lopinavir and hydroxychloroquine. It was also found that laevojunenol, rhamnocitrin, and 1,5-dihydroxy-3,8-dimethoxyxanthone qualifi ed the criteria for drug-likeness as per Lipinski rule. After attachment of the selected phytochemical with the spike protein the affi nity of the later towards ACE-2 was minimized and the eff ect of 1,5-dihydroxy-3,8- dimethoxyxanthone and laevojunenol was superior. Hence, rhamnocitrin of P. urinaria, 1,5-dihydroxy-3,8-dimethoxyxanthone of S. chirayita and laevojunenol of V. zizanioides, are potential therapeutic molecules for SARS-COV-2, which upon binding with spike protein changes the affi nity of the spike towards ACE-2 and therefore restrict the entry of the virus into a human cell. Subsequent clinical validation is needed to confi rm these phytochemicals as drugs to combat COVID-19.
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Covid-19 pandemic has enforced the entire scientific community to work together and find a solution for the adversity the whole world is facing. This has called for immediate actions, and the most common point of discussion and rapid way to tackle this is to repurpose the previously approved molecules and check their activity against this virus. The role of computational techniques has paved the way for rapid screening of molecules so as to provide us an insight on to designing drugs to inhibit this virus. Our group has screened the Dug bank database containing 8696 molecules. These molecules were screened using three tired molecular docking protocol. We utilized 5R82 as our target structure for the main protease enzyme of SARS-CoV-2, as it was the best available structure in Protein Data Bank. After screening the database, we obtained 200 molecules having docking scores better than the standard molecules (Ritonavir and Lopinavir). Eventually, after detailed analysis, we selected three molecules DB02307, DB04226, and DB01713, for Molecular dynamics simulation study and also compared them with standard molecules. The results clearly show these molecules can potentially act as the main protease inhibitor either by further optimization or repurposing the drug. The wait for the drug continues, but the repurposing strategy surely reveals the ray of hope.
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In the present work investigation of self-similarity as well as scaling analysis have been performed over daily number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in some major impacted countries viz. USA, Brazil, India, Russia, Spain, UK, Italy, Germany and France from their respective dates of first report of COVID-19 till June 30, 2020. To reduce uncertainty and irregular fluctuations in these present time series seven-point moving averages are taken and the entire analysis has been further performed over these seven-point moving average data. Scale invariance and self-similarity or self affinity manifests the fractal nature. For these time series, investigations of fractal nature have been performed by means of Higuchi method and corresponding fractal dimensions have been obtained. Also scaling analysis has been applied to understand the nature of the memory in these by means of Hurst exponent. Next, on the basis of these seven-point moving average data cumulative profiles of confirmed cases of COVID-19 for these countries have been generated. An effort has been made to understand the initial exponential growths in them. Study does not yield constant growth rates of infection;rather it shows time dependent profiles with variable functional representations at different windows of time for all these countries. Finally an effort has been made to predict the scenario for certain upcoming days for all the nine countries considered within a pre-assigned tolerance level continuing with the last obtained exponential growth rates. Results are not persistent in most of the cases. This might point towards a difficult scenario of prediction of future impacts in these countries. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.