Antiviral action of different molecules obtained from invertebrates against coronavirus (preprint)

The few availability of antivirals for new strains of highly pathogenic viruses has become a serious public health problem that leads to the death of thousands of people annually. For this reason, the search for new products against these agents has become an urgent need. Many studies have been carried out with this aim. Among the multiple sources of research for new antibiotics and antivirals, bioprospecting for molecules obtained from invertebrates, or their products, has become an increasingly frequent option. Arthropods appeared on the planet around 350 million years ago and have been one of the beings with the greatest adaptability and resistance. Invertebrates have been found in all known ecosystems. Their survival for so long, in such different environments, is an indication that they have a very efficient protection system against environmental infections, despite not having a developed immune system like mammals. Historically, products obtained mainly from bees, such as honey and propolis, have been shown to be of great pharmacologica l importance, being used as antimicrobials, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, healing and several other functions. However, these molecules have also been obtained from other invertebra tes, such as caterpillars and spiders. Previous studies by our group have demonstrated an intense antiviral and antimicrobial activity of these materials. In this study, we identified, isolated and characterized compounds with potent antiviral effect against avian Coronavirus in propolis from Scaptotrigona aff postica, hemolymph of Lonomia obliqua and from mygalin, an acylpolyamine, isolated from hemocytes of spider Acanthoscurria gomesiana. The antiviral assay was carried out by reducing infectious foci in cultures of infected cells and treated with these differents substances obtained from invertebrates. Propolis and crude hemolymph reduced avian coronavirus by an average of 256 x when used at a concentration of 5% v/v and an average reduction of 8x when 160{micro}M of Mygalin was used. Propolis purified and sinthetic hemolymph reduced the virus titer by an average 64 fold. The virus reduction with synthetic mygalin, at a concentration of 26 uM, was average of 16 times. The antiviral responses of the 3 substances were dose dependent. By the other hand, the virus titer reduction was 2 times more intense when the substances were added 1 hour before cell infection with the virus. The chemical characterization of the elements present in the extracts was carried out by liquid chromatography.

The Psychological Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemics on Pregnant Women in Hong Kong-Results of a Web-Based Cross-Sectional Survey

Background: We sought to assess the anxiety and depression scores of pregnant women in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate the impact of demographic, economic and social factors on these scores. Method(s): This was part of an ongoing worldwide cross-sectional study conducted from 22 May 2020 to 28 February 2021. Data were collected through an anonymous web-based survey. The severity of depression and anxiety was assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) score and the General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) score, respectively. Result(s): A total of 361 participants completed both the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 questionnaires. Participants with psychiatric illness reported a significant higher median GAD-7 score (6.00, interquartile range [IQR] 3.00-7.75 vs. 2.00, IQR 0.00-6.00, p = 0.001), while the median PHQ-9 score was also higher but was not statistically significant (6.50, IQR 3.00-11.00 vs. 5.00, IQR 3.00-8.00, p = 0.066). A higher proportion of participants with psychiatric illness reported moderate-severe depression and anxiety (35.7% vs. 16.5%, p = 0.002, 17.8% vs. 3.6%, p < 0.001 respectively). Multivariate regression analysis demonstrated that financial difficulty, in education and pregnancy by in-vitro fertilization were associated with a higher PHQ-9 score in pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic, while underlying psychiatric illness was associated with a higher GAD-7 score. Support from a partner was demonstrated to be associated with a reduced level of depression and anxiety in pregnancy. Conclusion(s): Pregnant women with underlying psychiatric illness were more vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemics than the non-psychiatric counterparts. Partner support is important for alleviating depression and anxiety in pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Trial Registration: The study was registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, registration number NCT04377412.Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).

A Data-Driven Context-Aware Health Inference System for Children during School Closures

Many countries have implemented school closures due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has inevitably affected children's physical and mental health. It is vital for parents to pay special attention to their children's health status during school closures. However, it is difficult for parents to recognize the changes in their children's health, especially without visible symptoms, such as psychosocial functioning in mental health. Moreover, healthcare resources and understanding of the health and societal impact of COVID-19 are quite limited during the pandemic. Against this background, we collected real-world datasets from 1,172 children in Hong Kong during four time periods under different pandemic and school closure conditions from September 2019 to January 2022. Based on these data, we first perform exploratory data analysis to explore the impact of school closures on six health indicators, including physical activity intensity, physical functioning, self-rated health, psychosocial functioning, resilience, and connectedness. We further study the correlation between children's contextual characteristics (i.e., demographics, socioeconomic status, electronic device usage patterns, financial satisfaction, academic performance, sleep pattern, exercise habits, and dietary patterns) and the six health indicators. Subsequently, a health inference system is designed and developed to infer children's health status based on their contextual features to derive the risk factors of the six health indicators. The evaluation and case studies on real-world datasets show that this health inference system can help parents and authorities better understand key factors correlated with children's health status during school closures. © 2023 ACM.

LIBKDV: A Versatile Kernel Density Visualization Library for Geospatial Analytics

Kernel density visualization (KDV) has been widely used in many geospatial analysis tasks, including traffic accident hotspot detection, crime hotspot detection, and disease outbreak detection. Although KDV can be supported by many scientific, geographical, and visualization software tools, none of these tools can support high-resolution KDV with large-scale datasets. Therefore, we develop the first versatile programming library, called LIBKDV, based on the set of our complexity-optimized algorithms. Given the high efficiency of these algorithms, LIBKDV not only accelerates the KDV computation but also enriches KDV-based geospatial analytics, including bandwidth-tuning analysis and spatiotemporal analysis, which cannot be natively and feasibly supported by existing software tools. In this demonstration, participants will be invited to use our programming library to explore interesting hotspot patterns on large-scale traffic accident, crime, and COVID-19 datasets. © 2022, VLDB Endowment. All rights reserved.

Impact of School Closure on Children'S Sleep Pattern During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: School closure is one of the main global health policies performed worldwide during the coronavir us di sease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Despite all of the advantages, there may be some risks for children who are quarantined. This study aimed to objectively measure and compares the sleep patterns of Hong Kong school students before and during the COVID-19 outbreak. Methods: Baseline assessment was performed before the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. The sleep pattern was recorded by a physical activity monitor (Actigraph wGT3X-BT, Pensacola, Florida, USA). The follow-up assessment was conducted in early 2020. Findings: In total, 718 students were collected in the baseline . Sub sequently 1 40 students joined t he reassessment between March and April 2020. Analysis of sleep timing shows that 98.0% primary students, 78.0% secondary students and 79.9% primary school students and 58.8% secondary school students go to bed before midnight before and after the outbreak, respectively (p<0.001). Mean sleep duration (hours) was 6.81 (0.62) and 8.09 (0.07) at baseline and during the outbreak, respectively. The differences in the mean sleep features for total sleep time, sleep fragmentation index and sleep fragmentation were 0.92 (1.64), 1.64 (6.95) and 2.49 (9.18), respectively. The overall sleep quality was poorer as evidenced by delays in bedtime and wake up time, increased duration in bed, longer sleep latency, increases in the movement and fragmentation indices. Conclusion: This exceptional longitudinal study reported objective data on the change in sleep patterns before and during the COVID-19 outbreak with school closures.

KDV-Explorer: A Near Real-Time Kernel Density Visualization System for Spatial Analysis

Kernel density visualization (KDV) is a commonly used visualization tool for many spatial analysis tasks, including disease outbreak detection, crime hotspot detection, and traffic accident hotspot detection. Although the most popular geographical information systems, e.g., QGIS, and ArcGIS, can also support this operation, these solutions are not scalable to generate a single KDV for datasets with million-scale data points, let alone to support exploratory operations (e.g., zoom in, zoom out, and panning operations) with KDV in near real-time (< 5 sec). In this demonstration, we develop a near real-time visualization system, called KDV-Explorer, that is built on top of our prior study on the efficient kernel density computation. Participants will be invited to conduct some kernel density analysis on three large-scale datasets (up to 1.3 million data points), including the traffic accident dataset, crime dataset and COVID-19 dataset. We will also compare the performance of our solution and the solutions in QGIS and ArcGIS.

Adolescents' attitudes to the COVID-19 vaccination.

Vaccines against COVID-19 are now available for adolescents in Hong Kong but vaccine hesitancy is a major barrier to herd immunity. This survey study explores Hong Kong adolescents' attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccination. 2609 adolescents from across Hong Kong completed an online survey focused on the intent to vaccinate and the reasons for their choice. 39% of adolescents intended to take the COVID-19 vaccination and significant factors for this decision include: having at least one parent vaccinated, knowing somebody diagnosed with COVID-19 and receiving the influenza vaccine. Adolescents' major concerns were either the safety and efficacy of the vaccine or the risk of infection. This study has proved that even in adolescents the vaccine hesitancy model is prominent with adolescents' intentions highly related to confidence in the vaccine and perception of disease risk. Future interventions should target these specific concerns to ensure adolescents are well educated to overcome vaccine hesitancy.

Lopinavir/ritonavir treatment in paediatric patients with covid-19

BackgroundProtease inhibitor lopinavir/ritonavir has been used alone or in combination with other therapeutics as treatment of COVID-19. Data on paediatric population are scarce.ObjectivesTo assess efficacy and safety of lopinavir/ritonavir for treating paediatric patients with COVID-19.MethodsFrom March to August 2020, patients aged 18 years or below with confirmed COVID-19 diagnosed by positive SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in their respiratory specimens in Department of Paediatrics, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital, Hong Kong, were included. Patients were treated with lopinavir/ritonavir at decision of primary physician for 14 days or shorter when patient was fit for discharge or PCR in nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) turned negative. NPS viral load, which was determined by RT-qPCR targeting the RdRp-Hel gene, was obtained at different study time points. Clinical features including demographics, duration of symptom and hospitalization, time to negative PCR in NPS, need of oxygen therapy or intensive care were retrieved from medical records.Results80 patients admitted from March 2020 to August 2020 for COVID-19 were recruited. 27(33.8%) received lopinavir/ritonavir and 53(66.2%) patients received standard of care. Median age of patients in both groups were 8 years. Most patients have no co-morbidity. 16(59.3%), 8(29.6%) and 3(11.1%) patients in treatment group while 33(62.3%), 20(37.7%) and none of patients in control group have upper respiratory infections, asymptomatic infection and pneumonia respectively. The median days from symptom onset to admission was 1 (IQR 0–2) in treatment and 3(IQR 1–5) in control group. The median days from symptom onset to start of lopinavir/ritonavir was 1(IQR 1–3). The NPS viral load reduction from baseline to day 7 was greater in treatment group. Viral load dropped from mean 6.5 log10 copies/ml (SD 2.1) on admission to mean 4.6 log10 copies/ml (SD 2.1) on day 7 in patients treated with lopinavir/ritonavir. Viral load dropped from mean 6.4 log10 copies/ml (SD 1.8) on admission to mean 5.3 log10 copies/ml (SD 1.5) on day 7 in patient who did not receive lopinavir/ritonavir. However, the difference was not statistically significant. There was no significant difference in viral load on day 10 and day 14 between the two groups. There was also no significant difference in time to symptom resolution, PCR negativity or duration of hospitalization. No patient in the cohort require oxygen or intensive care. Among those received treatment, 7(25.9%) patients experienced gastrointestinal symptoms possibly drug adverse effects with self-limited nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, as compared to 9(17%) patients in control group. 1(3.7%) and 3(5.7%) patients in treatment and control group have mild deranged liver function. There was no significant difference in rate of gastrointestinal symptom or liver function derangement among the two groups. There was no QT interval prolongation or serious adverse effect noted in patients received treatment.ConclusionsThere was no statistically significant difference in NPS viral load clearance, time to symptom resolution, PCR negativity and duration of hospitalization between paediatric COVID-19 patients treated with lopinavir/ritonavir and control. Self-limited gastrointestinal symptoms were common but use of lopinavir/ritonavir appeared to be safe in children with no serious side effect noted.

Combating the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the HONG KONG hospital authority paediatric infectious disease centre

Since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in late December 2019, and escalation of the public hospital infectious disease outbreak response level to the highest "emergency" level three days after two COVID-19 cases were diagnosed on 22 January 2020, all public hospitals implemented a series of isolation policies, rescheduled clinical services and mobilised resources to support frontline clinical staff. This article reviewed these multi-level policies adopted in the Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Princess Margaret Hospital, which have ensured that the healthcare system was not overwhelmed and frontline staff was not over-stressed and infected.

Short- and potential long-term adverse health outcomes of COVID-19: a rapid review.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in millions of patients infected worldwide and indirectly affecting even more individuals through disruption of daily living. Long-term adverse outcomes have been reported with similar diseases from other coronaviruses, namely Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Emerging evidence suggests that COVID-19 adversely affects different systems in the human body. This review summarizes the current evidence on the short-term adverse health outcomes and assesses the risk of potential long-term adverse outcomes of COVID-19. Major adverse outcomes were found to affect different body systems: immune system (including but not limited to Guillain-Barré syndrome and paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome), respiratory system (lung fibrosis and pulmonary thromboembolism), cardiovascular system (cardiomyopathy and coagulopathy), neurological system (sensory dysfunction and stroke), as well as cutaneous and gastrointestinal manifestations, impaired hepatic and renal function. Mental health in patients with COVID-19 was also found to be adversely affected. The burden of caring for COVID-19 survivors is likely to be huge. Therefore, it is important for policy makers to develop comprehensive strategies in providing resources and capacity in the healthcare system. Future epidemiological studies are needed to further investigate the long-term impact on COVID-19 survivors.