The Association Between Environmental Perchlorate, Nitrate, and Thiocyanate Exposure and Oral Pain in NHANES.

Aim: To examine the human exposure to perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate, and their associations with oral pain (OP) in the general population from the U.S. Methods: A total of 13,554 participants were enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The urinary perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate were measured using ion chromatography coupled with an electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. The multivariable linear and logistic regressions were performed to explore the associations of the urinary perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate, with the prevalence of oral pain. Restricted cubic splines were used to explore the non-linearity. Results: There are 3,129 OP cases. There was a higher urinary level of perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate in OP. We found that urinary thiocyanate was positively associated with OP (odds ratio [OR] = 1.06; [1, 1.13]; p = 0.049). Restricted cubic spines revealed that urinary thiocyanate was in a U-shape association with OP. Conclusions: Urinary thiocyanate was in a U-shape association with OP, suggesting that we should keep the exposure of thiocyanate under a reasonable range.

Exploring experiences of COVID-19-positive individuals from social media posts.

AIMS: This study aimed to explore the experience of individuals who claimed to be COVID-19 positive via their Twitter feeds. BACKGROUND: Public social media data are valuable to understanding people's experiences of public health phenomena. To improve care to those with COVID-19, this study explored themes from Twitter feeds, generated by individuals who self-identified as COVID-19 positive. DESIGN: This study utilized a descriptive design for text analysis for social media data. METHODS: This study analysed social media text retrieved by tweets of individuals in the United States who self-reported being COVID-19 positive and posted on Twitter in English between April 2, 2020, and April 24, 2020. In extracting embedded topics from tweets, we applied topic modelling approach based on latent Dirichlet allocation and visualized the results via LDAvis, a related web-based interactive visualization tool. RESULTS: Three themes were mined from 721 eligible tweets: (i) recognizing the seriousness of the condition in COVID-19 pandemic; (ii) having symptoms of being COVID-19 positive; and (iii) sharing the journey of being COVID-19 positive. CONCLUSION: Leveraging the knowledge and context of study themes, we present experiences that may better reflect patient needs while experiencing COVID-19. The findings offer more descriptive support for public health nursing and other translational public health efforts during a global pandemic.

Safety and efficacy of artemisinin-piperaquine for treatment of COVID-19: an open-label, non-randomised and controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: There are no effective therapies for patients with coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: Forty-one patients with confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled in the study and divided into two groups: artemisinin-piperaquine (AP) (n = 23) and control (n = 18). The primary outcome were the time taken to reach undetectable levels of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the percentage of participants with undetectable SARS-CoV-2 on days 7, 10, 14, and 28. The computed tomography (CT) imaging changes within 10 days, corrected QT interval changes, adverse events, and abnormal laboratory parameters were the secondary outcomes. RESULTS: The mean time to reach undetectable viral RNA (mean ± standard deviation) was 10.6 ± 1.1 days (95% confidence interval [CI] 8.4-12.8) for the AP group and 19.3 ± 2.1 days (95% CI 15.1-23.5) for the control group. The percentages of patients with undetectable viral RNA on days 7, 10, 14, 21, and 28 were 26.1%, 43.5%, 78.3%, 100%, and 100%, respectively, in the AP group and 5.6%, 16.7%, 44.4%, 55.6%, and 72.2%, respectively, in the control group. The CT imaging within 10 days post-treatment showed no significant between-group differences (P > 0.05). Both groups had mild adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, the time to reach undetectable SARS-CoV-2 was significantly shorter in the AP group than that in the control group. However, physicians should consider QT interval changes before using AP.

Mining twitter to explore the emergence of COVID-19 symptoms.

BACKGROUND: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in United States initially alerted the public to three COVID-19 signs and symptoms-fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath. Concurrent social media posts reflected a wider range of symptoms of COVID-19 besides these three symptoms. Because social media data have a potential application in the early identification novel virus symptoms, this study aimed to explore what symptoms mentioned in COVID-19-related social media posts during the early stages of the pandemic. METHODS: We collected COVID-19-related Twitter tweets posted in English language between March 30, 2020 and April 19, 2020 using search terms of COVID-19 synonyms and three common COVID-19 symptoms suggested by the CDC in March. Only unique tweets were extracted for analysis of symptom terms. RESULTS: A total of 36 symptoms were extracted from 30,732 unique tweets. All the symptoms suggested by the CDC for COVID-19 screening in March, April, and May were mentioned in tweets posted during the early stages of the pandemic. DISCUSSION: The findings of this study revealed that many COVID-19-related symptoms mentioned in Twitter tweets earlier than the announcement by the CDC. Monitoring social media data is a promising approach to public health surveillance.