ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus poses a global health threat with over 5 million deaths recorded. There is little understanding regarding SARS-CoV2 pathogenesis in the human airways and disease severity increases with age. Neutrophils are white blood cells found in large numbers in the airways of the lungs in severe COVID-19 patients. It is not known whether this influx of neutrophils into the airway has a protective or detrimental effect. We aim to understand the role of neutrophils during COVID-19 pathology, using an experimental infection model of the airway epithelium from the eldelry and children. To do this, we collect nasal airway cells from healthy elderly and children and grow them at air-liquid interface. Once differentiation and ciliation of these cells is reached, we infect the cells with SARS-CoV2 virus and allow neutrophils to migrate from the basolateral (blood) to the apical (air) side of the epithelium, similar to a physiological airway. Using flow cytometric analyses, we measure the expression of activation markers and the number of neutrophils that migrate across the epithelium of different ages in response to SARS-CoV2 infection. Preliminary work shows less viable neutrophils recovered from the elderly epithelium, more activated neutrophils when migrating through the elderly epithelium, as well as increased numbers of neutrophils remaining on the basolateral (blood) side of the elderly epithelium. These findings point to an inflammatory neutrophil phenotype influenced by the damaged elderly epithelium and supports the hypothesis that neutrophils are responsible for the severity of disease.
ABSTRACT
A more focused approach is needed to understand the SARS-CoV-2 virulence, structure, and genomics to devise more effective diagnostic and treatment interventions as this virus can evade the immune attack and causes life-threatening complications such as cytokine storm. The spread of the virus is still amplifying and causing thousands of new cases worldwide. It is essential to review current diagnostics and treatment approaches to pave the way to correct or modify our current practices to make more effective interventions against COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccine development has moved at a breakneck pace since the outbreak began, utilizing practically all possible platforms or tactics to ensure the success of vaccines. A total of 42 vaccine candidates have already entered clinical trials, including promising results from numerous vaccine candidates in phase 1 or phase 2 trials. Further, many existing drugs are being explored on broad-spectrum antiviral medications for their use in clinical recovery against COVID-19. The present review attempts to re-examine the SARS-CoV-2 structure, its viral life cycle, clinical symptoms and pathogenesis, mode of transmission, diagnostics, and treatment strategies that may be useful for resorting to more effective approaches for controlling COVID-19. Various antiviral drugs and vaccination strategies with their strengths and weaknesses are also discussed in the paper to augment our understanding of COVID-19 management.Copyright © 2022 Bentham Science Publishers.
ABSTRACT
There seems to be a growing curiosity for utilizing MIPs to recognize molecules that can be applied in numerous fields, such as biomimetic antibodies, detection of viruses and bacteria, the broad range of sensing devices, etc., owing to its scalability and economic viability. MIPs have higher thermal and chemical stability, delivering a promising potential for recognizing bacteria and viruses. The bacteria and virus imprinted polymer exhibit elongated product life-time, reproducible fabrication, robustness, reusability, sensitivity, and high target selectivity. Moreover, the MIPs could give consistent screening along with negligible false positive/negative outcomes, which is vital for the control and prevention of viral and bacterial infections. In the viral and bacterial imprinting process, critical aspects, such as compositional complexity, fragility, solubility, and target size, should be systematically evaluated and analytically considered. Although, the application of MIPs has a number of drawbacks and challenges that require solving to develop sensing platforms with high specificity and sensitivity for clinical application. In the present review, current progress and advancement regarding the reasoning and applications of MIPs as recognition molecules in various biosensors for detecting bacteria and viruses and its existing noteworthy challenges along with future perspectives are also reflected.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic has brought sudden changes in teaching and learning process compared to conventional face to face mode of education all around the globe. During social distancing in pandemic environment, the most common change that has been introduced was to opt online and hybrid mode of learning using e-resources by students and faculty at several organizations. In our organization, the BlackboardTM platform has been used to teach the course either in e-learning or blended mode. The present work is an epistemic case study of an electrical engineering subject taught in blended mode to undergraduate students. The performances of the students have been analysed in continuous assessment as well as in final assignment. The analysis criteria was based on expected “course learning outcomes” taken from ABET guidelines which was planned before the commencement of academic semester. In this case study, a specific part of the final assignment in which a questionnaire was framed to assess the “Understanding”, “Apply”, “Analyzed”, “Evaluate” and “Create” levels of Bloom's Taxonomy by determining the correlation factor among various parameters. It was observed that students had felt the difficulty in achieving the satisfactory response in “Evaluate” and “Create” while performed well in first three levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Based on analysis and results, it is concluded that to achieve satisfactory response of the students, continuous hands-on-experience of laboratory experiments and instruments are essential. In the coming months when it is difficult to start the face to face mode of teaching and learning, an alternate method for laboratory could be catered by introducing virtual laboratory and simulations. In addition a remedial plan has to be prepared to enhance the critical thinking of the students to improve the “Evaluate” and “Create” levels of students. © 2022, Rajarambapu Institute Of Technology. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Patient satisfaction in health care describes the degree to which patients' needs 'meet their expectations and provide an acceptable standard of care'. Therefore, their opinion should be incorporated to understand factors affecting patients' satisfaction with the health-care setting. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has posed a significant challenge for the field of dentistry owing to its working characteristics. It is difficult for dentists to provide optimum satisfaction to patients receiving dental care with such changes proposed. A study aiming to evaluate the patient's satisfaction receiving treatment in the Department of Dentistry during the pandemic was planned. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional observational study from September to November 2020 was conducted. A self-administered printed questionnaire drafted in English/Gujarati was provided to 225 patients on completion of their dental treatment. Thirteen close-ended questions were included in determining the patient's satisfaction. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to describe the parameters of the questionnaire. The Chi-square test was used to find a significant association between parameters, and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: About 74.3% of the participants were satisfied with dentist-patient communication. Positive response (80%) by patients where they were able to get an appointment as per their suitability and were informed in advance by the department if there were any changes. One hundred and sixty-eight (84%) patients responded that the waiting area was hygienic. One hundred and thirty-seven (68.5%) patients assured that their arrival was intimated to the respective dentist by supporting staff and that they were taken into an operatory for treatment within 10 min of arrival. Participants said that they were informed about the delay from their allotted appointment schedule with reasons;hence, better compliance (79%) was obtained from them. Conclusions: This cross-sectional study indicated that with proper communication, a positive response by participants over satisfaction was obtained even due to changing treatment patterns due to pandemic.
ABSTRACT
CASE: An 80-year-old woman with untreated osteoporosis and suspected primary hyperparathyroidism presents to establish care. Review of systems and physical examination are normal. She has mild hypercalcemia (11.2), and normal albumin and phosphorous. Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is elevated (71). Bone density testing demonstrates osteoporosis at the hip and spine (Tscore -2.9 and -3.0). She reports self-medicating with 12,000 IU of vitamin D daily to prevent COVID-19 infection, which she learned about from a popular news source;she is unvaccinated for COVID-19. Her vitamin D 25-OH level is 172 (normal 30-100). The patient was instructed to stop vitamin D supplementation. Additional work up for hyperparathyroidism was initiated, including 24-hour urine collection for calcium, and she was referred for a parathyroidectomy. IMPACT/DISCUSSION: Adequate vitamin D supplementation has been postulated to reduce the risk and severity of the COVID-19 infection through its immunomodulatory effects that augment the immune cell response, decrease inflammation, and prevent RAAS system dysregulation, which is associated with more severe coronavirus infection. However, trials and metaanalyses have yielded inconclusive data, with most reporting no associations between adequate or high-dose vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Nonetheless, popular news sources and social media have called for high-dose vitamin D supplementation, which can result in hypervitaminosis D through patient self-medication. Both hypervitaminosis D and primary hyperparathyroidism present with signs and symptoms of hypercalcemia, including nephrolithiasis, osteoporosis, bone pain, weakness, and neuropsychiatric changes. Hypervitaminosis D is caused by ingestion of too much exogenous vitamin D (normally more than 10,000 IU/day), dysregulation of the vitamin D pathway, or overproduction of vitamin D. Primary hyperparathyroidism is caused by parathyroid adenomas, hyperplasia, and carcinomas. Distinguishing between the two conditions involves a thorough history and physical, laboratory measurements, and occasionally imaging. Hypervitaminosis D patients have suppressed PTH levels, serum 25(OH)D > 150ng/mL, and hyperphosphatemia while primary hyperparathyroidism patients have normal/elevated PTH levels, low/normal 25(OH)D levels, and hypophosphatemia. Primary hyperparathyroidism is the most common cause of hypercalcemia, but this case highlights the importance of screening for and identifying other etiologies of hypercalcemia. This patient's vitamin D toxicity can be treated by stopping vitamin D supplementation. Her primary hyperparathyroidism meets criteria for a parathyroidectomy due to the presence of osteoporosis. CONCLUSION: 1. High dose vitamin D supplementation is ineffective as prophylaxis against the COVID-19 infection. 2. Hypercalcemia secondary to vitamin D toxicity is distinguished from primary hyperparathyroidism by PTH, 25(OH)D, and phosphorus levels.
ABSTRACT
Covid-19 crossed all international, national, regional boundaries so declared as Pandemic across the globe. Since one and half year every country is struggling to deal with this disease either by using preventive measures like lockdown, sanitization or with cure measure like treatment, isolation etc. Most important preventive measure adopted by every country now is Vaccination. But due to confusion, uncertainty and lack of awareness people have different opinion and sentiment about the vaccination drive. There is a drastic requirement to understand the People's sentiments on the vaccine, which may vary for different regions. Especially when these sentiments became vocal on social media, it may create adverse impact on the Vaccination Drive. This paper discusses predictive analytics and visualization methods for analyzing and predicting the summarized sentiments using social media channel: twitter. This approach is useful to provide support the vaccination drive by spreading awareness about the vaccine in the region with extreme negative sentiments. Corona Vaccine related tweets are analyzed and classified using various classification techniques as Bernoulli Naïve Bayes, Linear SVC and Random Forest. Visualization techniques are discussed to showcase summarized sentiments region-wise. This approach is effective and useful for support for vaccination drive for Covid-19 spread prevention. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Quantification of 25-hydroxy vitamin-D-3 (25-OHVD3) is important because its deficiency is related to numerous diseases, including osteoporosis, depression, diabetes, heart disease, certain autoimmune conditions, and even Covid-19. In the present study, noble metal-metal oxide nanohybrid based on L-cysteine functionalized gold decorated zirconia nanoparticles (Cys-Au@ZrO2 NPs) were synthesized with the objective of enhanced electrochemical behavior, stability, availability of functional group to covalently bind with biomolecules, and developing an efficient immunosensor for 25-OHVD3 detection. The formation of Au@ZrO2 NPs and further Cys functionalization was validated by various characterizations. Cys-Au@ZrO2 NPs were electrodeposited onto ITO substrate and further modified with antibodies specific to 25-OHVD3 (ab-25VD(3)) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) to build an immunosensing platform for 25-OHVD3 detection. The fabricated BSA/ab-25VD(3)/Cys-Au@ZrO2/ITO immunosensor demonstrated an improved sensitivity of 2.01 mu A ng(-1) ml cm(-2), LOD of 3.54 ng ml(-1) for the linear detection range of 1-50 ng ml(-1) with regression constant of 0.98. Moreover, the analytical performance of the BSA/ab-25VD(3)/Cys-Au@ZrO2/ITO immunosensor in determining 25-OHVD3 in human serum samples collected from four healthy people yielded satisfactory results that were highly correlated with the conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the COVID-19 an international health emergency due to the severity of infection progression, which became more severe due to its continuous spread globally and the unavailability of appropriate therapy and diagnostics systems. Thus, there is a need for efficient devices to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection at an early stage. Nowadays, the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique is being applied for detecting this virus around the globe; however, factors such as stringent expertise, long diagnostic times, invasive and painful screening, and high costs have restricted the use of RT-PCR methods for rapid diagnostics. Therefore, the development of cost-effective, portable, sensitive, prompt and selective sensing systems to detect SARS-CoV-2 in biofluids at fM/pM/nM concentrations would be a breakthrough in diagnostics. Immunosensors that show increased specificity and sensitivity are considerably fast and do not imply costly reagents or instruments, reducing the cost for COVID-19 detection. The current developments in immunosensors perhaps signify the most significant opportunity for a rapid assay to detect COVID-19, without the need of highly skilled professionals and specialized tools to interpret results. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) can also be equipped with this immunosensing approach to investigate useful networking through database management, sharing, and analytics to prevent and manage COVID-19. Herein, we represent the collective concepts of biomarker-based immunosensors along with AI and IoMT as smart sensing strategies with bioinformatics approach to monitor non-invasive early stage SARS-CoV-2 development, with fast point-of-care (POC) diagnostics as the crucial goal. This approach should be implemented quickly and verified practicality for clinical samples before being set in the present times for mass-diagnostic research.