Sleep And Positive Emotions In Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa In Relation To The Covid-19 Pandemic (preprint)

Purpose: The recent COVID-19 pandemic, and its consequent lockdown measures raised concerns about people’s mental health. Identified vulnerable groups may be especially at risk. This study investigated the impact of this unprecedent situation on sleeping patterns and emotionality in adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN). Methods: : Variations in sleeping patterns and emotionality of 101 adolescents with AN, assessed during the pandemic (Covid-19 Group), and the year before (No-Covid-19 Group) were analyzed. We further investigated these variations over time: before the lockdown, 9 months later and after the lockdown. Results: : Adolescents in the Covid-19 Group had significantly higher rates of sleep alterations and lower rates of positive emotions, compared to the No-Covid-19 Group. A higher insomnia severity index score and a tendency to lengthen sleep latency time were also associated with the pandemic period. Considering three different groups of patients over time, the kinetics of the impact of the changes shows that the worsening of values is not strictly limited to the acute lockdown phase but is increasing over time. Conclusions: These sleep and emotionality features could have participated to increase severity and incidence of AN in adolescents during the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, these features could represent therapeutic targets to optimize the care of adolescents with AN, particularly urgent to improve considering the kinetic of the deterioration. Tools such as those provided by cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi) and by the positive psychology seem appropriate to guide clinicians in this context. Level of evidence: Level V, descriptive study (evaluation data retrospectively studied).

Analysis of cardiac involvement in patients recovered from Covid-19 without troponin elevation, evaluated by cardiovascular magnetic resonance. (preprint)

Background: The disease caused by coronavirus (COVID-19) affects the cardiovascular system, whether by direct viral aggression or indirectly through systemic inflammation and multiple organ compromise. A widely used method to determine cardiac injury is troponin measurement. The aim of this study is to evaluate the prevalence of cardiac involvement (CINV) in a population recovered from COVID-19, referred to cardiac MRI (CMR), who did not present troponin elevation. Methods There were 156 patients that recovered from COVID-19 and who did not present troponin elevation referred to CMR. CINV was considered to be the presence of: late gadolinium enhancement (LGE), edema, myocarditis, pericarditis, left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) and/or depressed right ventricular systolic dysfunction (RVSD). Results Prevalence of CINV was 28.8%, being more frequent in men (p = 0.002), in patients who required hospitalization (p = 0.04) and in those who experienced non-mild cases of infection (p = 0.007). RVSD (17.9%) and LVSD (13.4%) were the most frequent findings. The rate of myocarditis was 0.6%. LGE manifested in 7.1% of patients and its presence was related to less left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (p = 0.0001) and right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) (p = 0.04). Conclusion In patients who recovered from COVID-19, 28.8% of CINV was found. It was more frequent in men, in patients who required admission and in patients with cases of non-mild infection. The patients that presented LGE had less LVEF and RVSF.

Suppression of COVID-19 outbreak in the municipality of Vo, Italy (preprint)

On the 21st of February 2020 a resident of the municipality of Vo, a small town near Padua, died of pneumonia due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. This was the first COVID-19 death detected in Italy since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Hubei province. In response, the regional authorities imposed the lockdown of the whole municipality for 14 days. We collected information on the demography, clinical presentation, hospitalization, contact network and presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in nasopharyngeal swabs for 85.9% and 71.5% of the population of Vo at two consecutive time points. On the first survey, which was conducted around the time the town lockdown started, we found a prevalence of infection of 2.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.1-3.3%). On the second survey, which was conducted at the end of the lockdown, we found a prevalence of 1.2% (95% CI 0.8-1.8%). Notably, 43.2% (95% CI 32.2-54.7%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic. The mean serial interval was 6.9 days (95% CI 2.6-13.4). We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load (as measured by genome equivalents inferred from cycle threshold data) of symptomatic versus asymptomatic infections (p-values 0.6 and 0.2 for E and RdRp genes, respectively, Exact Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test). Contact tracing of the newly infected cases and transmission chain reconstruction revealed that most new infections in the second survey were infected in the community before the lockdown or from asymptomatic infections living in the same household. This study sheds new light on the frequency of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and their infectivity (as measured by the viral load) and provides new insights into its transmission dynamics, the duration of viral load detectability and the efficacy of the implemented control measures.