ABSTRACT
Current guidelines from the World Health Organization indicate that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which results in the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is transmitted through respiratory droplets or by contact. Contact transmission occurs when contaminated hands touch the mucous membrane of the mouth, nose, or eyes so hands hygiene is extremely important to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 as well as of other pathogens. The vast proliferation of wearable devices, such as smartwatches, containing acceleration, rotation, magnetic field sensors, etc., together with the modern technologies of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning and more recently deep-learning, allow the development of accurate applications for recognition and classification of human activities such as: walking, climbing stairs, running, clapping, sitting, sleeping, etc. In this work, we evaluate the feasibility of a machine learning based system which, starting from inertial signals collected from wearable devices such as current smartwatches, recognizes when a subject is washing or rubbing its hands. Preliminary results, obtained over two different datasets, show a classification accuracy of about 95% and of about 94% for respectively deep and standard learning techniques.
ABSTRACT
Background: Gut microbiota is a complex ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, archaea, protozoa and yeasts in our intestine. It has several functions, including maintaining human body equilibrium. Microbial “dysbiosis” can be responsible for outbreak of local and systemic infections, especially in critically ill patients. Methods: to build a narrative review, we performed a Pubmed, Medline and EMBASE search for English language papers, reviews, meta-analyses, case series and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) by keywords and their associations: critically ill patient;nutrition;gut microbiota;probiotics;gut virome;SARS-COV 2. Results: Over the antibiotic-based “selective decontamination”, potentially responsible for drug-resistant microorganisms development, there is growing interest of scientists and the pharmaceutical industry for pre-, probiotics and their associations as safe and reliable remedies restoring gut microbial “eubiosis”. Very first encouraging evidences link different gut microbiota profiles with SARS-COV 2 disease stage and gravity. Thus, there is frame for a probiotic therapeutic approach of COVID-19. Conclusions: gut microbiota remodulation seems to be a promising and safe therapeutic approach to prevent local and systemic multi-resistant bug infections in the intensive care unit (ICU) patients. This approach deserves more and more attention at the time of SARS-COV 2 pandemic.