Antiviral activity of the human endogenous retrovirus-R envelope protein against SARS-CoV-2

Coronavirus-induced disease-19 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, is still a major global health challenge. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) represent retroviral elements that were integrated into the ancestral human genome. HERVs are important in embryonic development as well as in the manifestation of diseases, including cancer, inflammation, and viral infections. Here, we analyze the expression of several HERVs in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells and observe increased activity of HERV-E, HERV-V, HERV-FRD, HERV-MER34, HERV-W, and HERV-K-HML2. In contrast, the HERV-R envelope is downregulated in cell-based models and PBMCs of COVID-19 patients. Overexpression of HERV-R inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication, suggesting its antiviral activity. Further analyses demonstrate the role of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) in regulating HERV-R antiviral activity. Lastly, our data indicate that the crosstalk between ERK and p38 MAPK controls the synthesis of the HERV-R envelope protein, which in turn modulates SARS-CoV-2 replication. These findings suggest the role of the HERV-R envelope as a prosurvival host factor against SARS-CoV-2 and illustrate a possible advantage of integration and evolutionary maintenance of retroviral elements in the human genome.Copyright © 2023 The Authors.

Dual-Scale Cnn Architecture for Covid-19 Detection from Lung Ct Images

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a terrible illness affecting the respiratory systems of animals and humans. By 2020, this sickness had become a pandemic, affecting millions worldwide. Prevention of the spread of the virus by conducting fast tests for many suspects has become difficult. Recently, many deep learning-based methods have been developed to automatically detect COVID-19 infection from lung Computed Tomography (CT) images of the chest. This paper proposes a novel dual-scale Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture to detect COVID-19 from CT images. The network consists of two different convolutional blocks. Each path is similarly constructed with multi-scale feature extraction layers. The primary path consists of six convolutional layers. The extracted features from multipath networks are flattened with the help of dropout, and these relevant features are concatenated. The sigmoid function is used as the classifier to identify whether the input image is diseased. The proposed network obtained an accuracy of 99.19%, with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 0.99. The proposed network has a lower computational cost than the existing methods regarding learnable parameters, the number of FLOPS, and memory requirements. The proposed CNN model inherits the benefits of densely linked paths and residuals by utilizing effective feature reuse methods. According to our experiments, the proposed approach outperforms previous algorithms and achieves state-of-the-art results.

Baseline Peripheral Blood Counts and Outcomes in Patients Presenting with Chinese Virus Infection COVID-19

Introduction: SARS-CoV2 Chinese virus pandemic has significant impact on hematopoietic system. Aims & Objectives: To report the incidence and pattern of baseline hematological parameters in patients with COVID-19 and their association with severity of disease and outcome. Material(s) and Method(s): Retrospective observational study. Result(s): A total of 440 patients were included in the study. The mean age of the study cohort was 47.5 +/- 15.8 years. Fifty percent of patients had at least 1 comorbidity. ICU stay was required in 125 (39.6%) patients. Overall mortality in the study cohort was 3.52%. The average age of patients who died was significantly higher than that of patients who were alive (65.1 years vs 46.5 years;p = 0.000). DM, HTN, CAD and CKD were all associated with higher incidence of ICU stay and mortality. Lymphopenia<1 x 109/mul was observed in 24.3% and eosinopenia was noted in 44.3% patients. Leukocytosis > 11 x 109/mul was seen in 8.2% of patients. The median neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) of whole cohort was 2.63. NLR, Lymphopenia, eosinopenia, leucocytosis, D dimer, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), ferritin and IL6 levels all were associated with need for ICU transfer and mortality. Hemoglobin, red cell distribution width (RDW), PT and aPTT correlated with need for ICU transfer but not with mortality. Ferritin cutoff >= 751 ng/ml and IL6 levels >= 64 pg/ml was able to identify all deaths. Ferritin (0.989) and IL-6 (0.985) had very high negative predictive value. Conclusion(s): Peripheral blood counts at time of hospitalization is a simple tool to predict outcomes in patients admitted with Chinese virus infection Covid-19. (Table Presented).

Red Blood Cell-Derived Nanoerythrosomes Mediated Efficient Delivery Of Mrna Vaccine Candidate Against COVID-19

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major public health concern throughout the world. Various ventures of vaccine candidates are being studied rigorously in this regard and one such candidate is the receptor binding domain (RBD) of spike protein which interacts with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the host cell's membrane. Exploiting this interaction, many scientists across the world attempted to develop mRNA vaccine against SARSCoV- 2. A major lacuna associated with mRNA vaccines is their delivery through a suitable carrier, especially given the stability issues associated with mRNA vaccines. Aims & Objectives: The aim of our research is to develop an efficient mode of delivery of the self-amplifying mRNA (saRNA) against COVID 19. We have developed small vesicles from erythrocyte ghosts, known as nanoerythrosomes, which are in the nanometre range and focussed on development of nanoerythrosomes for delivery of mRNA-based vaccines. Material(s) and Method(s): Nanoerythrosomes were prepared from erythrocytes using osmotic and ultrasonic frequency stress and loaded with saRNA vaccine candidate. Thereafter, the nanoerythrosomes were characterized using Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to confirm their homogeneity, integrity and size. The mRNA loaded nanoerythrosomes were used to deliver the mRNA in Vero E6 cells to evaluate its uptake. Result(s): The characterization of nanoerythrosomes using DLS and TEM revealed their size in the range of 100-200 nm. The delivery mediated by nanoerythrosomes was comparable to the Lipofectamine mediated uptake of saRNA indicating the excellent delivery efficacy of nanoerythrosomes. The added advantage of nanoerythrosomes mediated delivery is that they are rapidly taken up from blood by macrophages of the reticuloendothelial system (RES) that is present in liver, lung, and spleen. Thus the combination of saRNA and nanoerythrosomes can accelerate the uptake and antigen presentation in reticuloendothelial system and will provide an outstanding platform for the development of SARS-CoV2 vaccine. Conclusion(s): We developed a new approach to deliver mRNA vaccine candidates using nanoerythrosomes and successfully demonstrate its efficacy in vitro. This strategy can be further extended for the delivery of other vaccine candidates. (Figure Presented).

The South African Public School System, Education In Crisis: A Review of Our COVID19 Response

COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the world's poorest communities and highlighted several systemic imbalances, leaving nations vulnerable and destitute. Taking a worldwide perspective on the influence on the right to education, this article analyzes how the South African education systems responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we swiftly transition to distance education, we must also ensure that we are not caught off guard again. Education systems worldwide must begin long-term planning and construction of distance education systems in order to be prepared for the inevitable next emergency. If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it is that distance education cannot be a 'nice to have' supplement to the existing educational system;it must be a 'must have,' integrated, and indispensable component of the total educational system. The findings indicated that governments have an uneven capacity for responding to and preparing for the learning losses associated with school closures. We concluded that it is critical to articulate inclusive educational policies that support strengthening the government's response capacity, particularly in terms of access to technology, electricity, connectivity, ICT devices, learning materials and technology adapted curriculum and educator training all in addressing the countries response to educational crisis and eventually embracing the opportunity of stirring the education sector into the fourth industrial revolution. © 2021 IEEE.

SecDH: Security of COVID-19 images based on data hiding with PCA.

Nowadays, image security and copyright protection become challenging, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the paper, we develop SecDH as a medical data hiding scheme, which can guarantee the security and copyright protection of the COVID-19 images. Firstly, the cover image is normalized, which offers high resistance against the geometric attacks. Secondly, the normalized principal component as embedding factor is computed, which are calculated based on principal component analysis (PCA) between cover and mark image. Thirdly, the medical image is invisibly marked with secret mark based on normalized component, redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and randomized singular value decomposition (RSVD) is introduced. Finally, Arnold cat map scheme employed to ensure the security of the watermarking system. Under the experimental evaluation, our SecDH tool is not only imperceptible, but also has a satisfactory advantage in robustness and security compared with the traditional watermarking schemes.

Predictive Value of Chest CT Score in Assessing Disease Severity and Short-term Mortality in COVID-19 Pneumonia at a Tertiary Care Centre in Northern India: A Prospective Observational Study

Introduction: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection, also known as Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) is the global pandemic, first described in Wuhan city of China in December of 2019. Its diagnosis depends upon real-time Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR). On chest Computerised Tomography (CT), it is almost similar to other viral pneumonia with extensive parenchymal involvement. Semiquantitative scores depicting this extensiveness of involvement could correlate with disease severity, laboratory parameters, mortality, like Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission, requirements of ventilatory support and longer hospital stay. Aim: To define role of chest CT score in determining disease severity, predicting poor prognosis and mortality of COVID-19 pneumonia in short-term follow-up. Materials and Methods: This prospective study enrolled all admitted real-time RT-PCR positive patients for COVID-19 at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, India between 15th April and 31st May 2021. All patients were assigned semiquantitative CT scores based on the extent of lung parenchymal involvement of 20 lung regions in chest CT. Clinical severity was matched with chest CT scoring and laboratory findings. Survival curves along with univariate and multivariate analysis were applied to define the role of CT scoring in predicting short term prognosis. Results: Total 547 subjects were included in the study, of which the chest CT score showed a significant association with clinical seventies (p-value <0.001). CT score were correlating significantly with increased serum C-Reactive Protein (CRP) (p-value=0.001) and D-dimer (p-value=0.01), and decreased lymphocyte count (p-value=0.003). A CT score >= 31 was found to be associated with an increased risk of mortality in both univariate and multivariate analysis {Odd Ratio (OR)=276.8;95% Confidence Interval (CI). 45.21-1695.43;p-value <0.001}. Conclusion: Chest CT score can be imaging measure of disease severity and predict a higher probability of mortality in score >= 31. It can also predict other defined variables of short-term prognosis. So, it has an advantage in speedy diagnostic workflow of symptomatic cases, timely referral of patients to higher centre, and better management of critical care resources.

Seven day continuous ambulatory electrocardiographic telemetric study with pocket electrocardiographic recording device for detecting hydroxychloroquine induced arrhythmias.

Objective: The use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for COVID-19 treatment and prophylaxis raised issues concerning its cardiac safety owing to the possibility of QT prolongation and arrhythmias. There was no study on long-term electrocardiographic telemetry monitoring of patients taking HCQ. We planned a continuous electrocardiographic Holter telemetry of these patients for 7 days. Material and Methods: Health care workers taking HCQ as pre exposure prophylaxis and patients on HCQ were monitored using seven day Holter electrocardiographic telemetry with continuous beat to beat analysis. Telemetry can instantly convey any arrhythmic event or significant QT prolongation to the medical faculty. Results: Twenty-five participants with a mean age of 42.4 ± 14.1 years were included in the study; 40% were females. Twenty percent of participants needed to stop HCQ. Four patients developed QT prolongation >500 ms and needed to stop HCQ, one patient had accelerated idioventricular rhythm and stopped treatment, and one had short episodes of atrial fibrillation. No malignant arrhythmia or ventricular arrhythmia, or torsade de pointis were noted. No episode of significant conduction disturbance and arrhythmic death was noted. Baseline mean QTc was 423.96 ± 32.18 ms, mean QTc corrected at 24 h was 438.93 ± 37.95, mean QTc was 451.879 ± 37.99 at 48 h, and change in baseline mean QTc to max QTc was 30.74 ± 21.75 ms at 48 h. All those who developed QTc prolongation >500 ms were greater than 50 years of age. Conclusion: Ambulatory telemetry ECG monitoring detects early QT prolongation, and stopping drugs prevents malignant arrhythmias. HCQ seems to have less risk of QT prolongation in young, healthy individuals.

Practice Pattern of Critical Care Physicians in India for Use of Corticosteroids in COVID-19

Introduction: Steroids are recommended as the standard of care in managing severe COVID-19. However, several questions remain unanswered regarding the prescription of steroids which led to differing opinions and practice. We surveyed practice patterns of critical care physicians in India for the use of corticosteroids in COVID-19. Methods: This was a nationwide, cross-sectional, online, knowledge attitude practice-based survey, among intensivists for corticosteroid use in COVID-19. The survey questionnaire had seven questions for demographic data and 14 questions in the core survey. Results: 384 responses were analyzed from different parts of the country. A majority (81.2%) agreed that steroids improved oxygenation and survival chances. 88.3% agreed that steroids are indicated because of their anti-inflammatory properties, and should be prescribed in patients with moderate (75.8%), severe (59.9%), or critical (41.1%) COVID-19. 68.8% of physicians start steroids on the basis of "need for oxygen therapy" and hyperglycemia (85.2%) was the most commonly reported complication. 59.1% prefer prescribing methylprednisolone followed by Dexamethasone (38.8%). 51.8% preferred to use low dose steroids, and 59.1% have used "pulse steroids''. Rather than a fixed duration of therapy, 66.9% of the respondents rely on "clinical improvement" before stopping steroids, even if it meant continuing steroids for prolonged periods beyond 14 days (34.1%). 57.8% always taper steroids before stopping. Conclusions: We found wide variation in the practice patterns of critical care physicians in India for use of Corticosteroids in COVID-19. The dilemma regarding when to initiate, type of steroid, dose, and duration of therapy still persist emphasizing the need for further research.

Insights and reflections using data analytics approach of COVID-19 situation among the Indian states and ethical considerations

COVID-19, a pandemic has suddenly created an unprecedented crisis in the world. COVID-19 has severely affected the lives of all the people around the world by forcing the closure or suspension of almost all socio-economic activities. Some of the countries including developed and developing such as China, the USA, Italy, Spain, the UK, France, Iran and India, etc are comprehensively affected to a deep level by this virus in terms of an incurable disease. Several countries have no options as they were hit by COVID-19 in total surprise and had no case study to follow. But some countries have attempted to face the virus such as China, Italy, Spain, Iran, etc. In this context, India has strict preventive majors in the form of a lockdown strategy besides the loosely executed testing and tracking methods. Despite all policies and decisions implementation, and their stringent execution, it is spread, and now India is in the top three COVID-19 affected countries. The rampant increase of COVID-19 cases, their response, and its impact on mortality, the effectiveness of controlling the situation by States need sharp analysis. The proposed work is an attempt to critically assess and explore the pervasive pandemic situation spread in most of the Indian state utilizing comparative analysis using data science methods contrasting them horizontally. Furthermore, the research work suggests few in-depth insights and recommends directions, steps for the public, government and other stakeholders for better management of the COVID-19 situation. Additionally, the study also deals with some ethical issues involved in the data creation, curation, and reporting on the various platforms used in the research work.

Hematological manifestations of Indian patients presenting with covid 19

Aims & Objectives: Severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can have significant impact on the haematological system in the form of cytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation. We intended to study the incidence and pattern of hematological involvement in patient with COVID 19. We also To study the association of hematological involvement with severity and outcomes like death and ICU stay. Patients/Materials & Methods: This retrospective study was conducted at Max Superspecialty Hospital, Saket, NewDelhi. All patients>18 years of age and who are admitted with COVID19 infection from 1st May 2020 to 1st June 2020 were enrolled in the study. Results: A total of 440 patients were included in the study. The mean age of the study population was 47.57 + 15.83 years. Two-third of patients were males. Fifity percent of patients had at least 1 underlying comorbidity. Mean duration of hospitals stay was 11.45 + 4.45 days. Lymphopenia was observed in 24.3%. Eosinopenia was seen in 44.3%. Leukocytosis was seen in 8.2%. Prolonged PT was observed in 60.5% of patients. Overall mortality was 3.40%. Need for ICU stay was seen in 28.40%. Severe disease was seen in 19.7%. Age and presence of comorbidity was associated with severe disease, need for ICU stay and mortality. Male sex was associated with need for ICU stay and severe disease. Neutrophil Lymphocyte ratio was high in patients having severe disease, ICU admission and mortality. Multiple regression analysis showed that Ferritin and IL6 predicted mortality. Discussion & Conclusion: COVID19 infection is associated with significant changes in haematological system.

Psychiatry postgraduate examinations for 2020 in the middle of COVID19 crisis: Suggestions from Indian teachers of psychiatry.

The COVID19 pandemic is an unprecedented disaster. In India, the spread of COVID19 infection and the subsequent lockdown coincided with a crucial period of the annual examination in almost all educational institutions. The pandemic has created hurdles in the conduct of examination due to many reasons, some of which are spread of infection and associated safety issues, lack of public transport for patients as well as the postgraduates in outstation and examiners, and lack of workforce due to round-the-clock service for rendering health services leading to difficulty in arranging logistics at the examination center. Currently, there are no guidelines or policies on how examinations need to be carried out during such a pandemic. Hence, there is an urgent need to look at solutions within the profession for the completion of examination. Teachers of psychiatry play an important role in the national mental health services. Their expertise can be valuable for finding solutions that work. This article has compiled suggestions from Indian teachers of psychiatry.