The preclinical and clinical progress of cell sheet engineering in regenerative medicine.

Cell therapy is an accessible method for curing damaged organs or tissues. Yet, this approach is limited by the delivery efficiency of cell suspension injection. Over recent years, biological scaffolds have emerged as carriers of delivering therapeutic cells to the target sites. Although they can be regarded as revolutionary research output and promote the development of tissue engineering, the defect of biological scaffolds in repairing cell-dense tissues is apparent. Cell sheet engineering (CSE) is a novel technique that supports enzyme-free cell detachment in the shape of a sheet-like structure. Compared with the traditional method of enzymatic digestion, products harvested by this technique retain extracellular matrix (ECM) secreted by cells as well as cell-matrix and intercellular junctions established during in vitro culture. Herein, we discussed the current status and recent progress of CSE in basic research and clinical application by reviewing relevant articles that have been published, hoping to provide a reference for the development of CSE in the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine.

Video-Assisted Versus Traditional Problem-Based Learning: A Quasi-Experimental Study Among Pediatric Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND: The text-assisted problem-based, methods traditionally used to teach nursing students cannot adequately simulate holistic clinical situations and patient symptoms. Although video-assisted, problem-based learning methods combined with text have shown positive results in terms of improving comprehension and cognitive abilities, some studies have shown these methods to be inferior to text-assisted methods in terms of promoting deep critical thinking in medical students. PURPOSE: This study was designed to assess the benefits in nursing education of video-assisted, problem-based learning using online multimedia technologies compared with text-assisted, problem-based learning using traditional face-to-face classes. METHODS: A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group, preintervention-and-postintervention design was used. The experimental group ( n = 31) received video-assisted, problem-based learning materials with multimedia technologies (video scenarios, Google Docs worksheets, Google slides, Zoom cloud meetings, and e-learning management system) and weekly online lectures (100 minutes) for 4 weeks. The control group ( n = 35) received text-assisted, problem-based learning materials with traditional face-to-face classes and weekly lectures (100 minutes) for 4 weeks. The study data were analyzed using chi-square, Fisher's exact, and independent t tests as well as analysis of variance. RESULTS: At posttest, learning motivation ( t = 3.25, p = .002), academic self-efficacy ( t = 2.41, p = .019), and self-directed learning ( t = 3.08, p = .003) were significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Video-assisted, problem-based learning using multimedia technologies was shown to be effective in increasing learning motivation, academic self-efficacy, and self-directed learning in nursing students. These findings have implications for the development and planning of contactless classes in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, no intergroup differences were found in terms of problem-solving skills. Future studies should include in-depth reviews and assessments of the difficulties faced in producing problem scenarios as well as the methods of instruction.

SARS-CoV-2 omicron BA.1.1 is highly resistant to antibody neutralization of convalescent serum from the origin strain.

The emergence and rapid spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron variant (BA.1.1) has attracted global attention. The numerous mutations in the spike protein suggest that it may have altered susceptibility to immune protection elicited by the existing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. We used a live virus neutralization test and SARS-CoV-2 pseudotype vesicular stomatitis virus vector-based neutralization assay to assess the degree of immune escape efficiency of the original, Delta (B1.617.2), and Omicron strains against the serum antibodies from 64 unvaccinated patients who had recovered from COVID-19 and the results were strongly correlated. The convalescent serum neutralization was more markedly reduced against the Omicron variant (9.4-57.9-fold) than the Delta variant (2.0-4.5-fold) as compared with the original strain. Our results demonstrate the reduced fusion and notable immune evasion capabilities of the Omicron variants, highlighting the importance of accelerating the development of vaccines targeting them.

Lockdown in Chinese university dormitories: Significant increase in negative feelings and time perception distortion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global crisis resulting in lockdowns worldwide. Studies found that these could amplify negative affects predictive of disturbances in time perception. However, all existing studies on this topic concentrated on the general population during a lockdown at home. There was no research on university students living in dormitories. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating the affective states and awareness of the passage of time of Chinese university students during an exceptional dormitory lockdown. Using a snowball sampling approach, this web-based study recruited 225 volunteers (136 girls, 17-27 years old) during a dormitory lockdown. The online survey consisted of questions on demographic information, affective states (the Chinese version of the depression anxiety stress scales-21 (DASS-21) on depression, anxiety, and stress), and sense of the passage of time (the translated version of the assessment of passage of time over daily, weekly and yearly periods). The researchers shared the questionnaire link via the social media application WeChat. The study applied descriptive statistics and column charts to represent students' affective states and sense of the passage of time under extreme conditions and Pearson's correlation analysis to examine the impact of affective states on their sense of time. The study's results indicate that the dormitory lockdown caused a significant increase in all depression, anxiety, and stress categories of the DASS-21, as well as a distortion of the sense of time passing. However, the direction of the distortion differed from that in previous studies. Moreover, a Pearson correlation analysis showed that none of the three negative affects could be associated with students' sense of time. The findings of this study indicate an increased vulnerability of students due to the lockdown. Their emotions were strongly affected, requiring particular interventions to preserve their mental well-being. In addition, they showed a different distortion direction of time passage. Finally, they differed in the correlations between negative affect and the sense of passage of time compared to the general population in lockdown at home. This shows a need to investigate the impact of psychological states on students' routines and quality of life in emergencies. This study's scope should be expanded by incorporating additional factors pertaining to the passage of time and by integrating cross-cultural comparisons.

Dynamic chest computed tomography change analysis and prediction of length of stay for delta variant COVID-19 patients

OBJECTIVE: As hospital admission rate is high during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital length of stay (LOS) is a key indicator of medical resource allocation. This study aimed to elucidate specific dynamic longitudinal computed tomography (CT) imaging changes for patients with COVID-19 over in-hospital and predict individual LOS of COVID-19 patients with Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 using the machine learning method. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective study recruited 448 COVID-19 patients with a total of 1761 CT scans from July 14, 2021 to August 20, 2021 with an averaged hospital LOS of 22.5 ± 7.0 days. Imaging features were extracted from each CT scan, including CT morphological characteristics and artificial intelligence (AI) extracted features. Clinical features were obtained from each patient's initial admission. The infection distribution in lung fields and progression pattern tendency was analyzed. Then, to construct a model to predict patient LOS, each CT scan was considered as an independent sample to predict the LOS from the current CT scan time point to hospital discharge combining with the patients' corresponding clinical features. The 1761 follow-up CT data were randomly split into training set and testing set with a ratio of 7:3 at patient-level. A total of 85 most related clinical and imaging features selected by Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator were used to construct LOS prediction model. RESULTS: Infection-related features were obtained, such as the percentage of the infected region of lung, ground-glass opacity (GGO), consolidation and crazy-paving pattern, and air bronchograms. Their longitudinal changes show that the progression changes significantly in the earlier stages (0–3 days to 4–6 days), and then, changes tend to be statistically subtle, except for the intensity range between (−470 and −70) HU which exhibits a significant increase followed by a continuous significant decrease. Furthermore, the bilateral lower lobes, especially the right lower lobe, present more severe. Compared with other models, combining the clinical, imaging reading, and AI features to build the LOS prediction model achieved the highest R2 of 0.854 and 0.463, Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.939 and 0.696, and lowest mean absolute error of 2.405 and 4.426, and mean squared error of 9.176 and 34.728 on the training and testing set. CONCLUSION: The most obvious progression changes were significantly in the earlier stages (0–3 days to 4–6 days) and the bilateral lower lobes, especially the right lower lobe. GGO, consolidation, and crazy-paving pattern and air bronchograms are the most main CT findings according to the longitudinal changes of infection-related features with LOS (day). The LOS prediction model of combining clinical, imaging reading, and AI features achieved optimum performance.

Olfactory and gustatory dysfunctions of COVID-19 patients in China: A multicenter study.

Introduction: With the spread of the epidemic worldwide, an increasing number of doctors abroad have observed the following atypical symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): olfactory or taste disorders. Therefore, clarifying the incidence and clinical characteristics of olfactory and taste disorders in Chinese COVID-19 patients is of great significance and urgency. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted, which included 229 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 confirmed patients, through face-to-face interviews and telephone follow-up. Following the completion of questionnaires, the patients participating in the study, were categorized according to the degree of olfactory and taste disorders experienced, and the proportion of each clinical type of patient with olfactory and taste disorders and the time when symptoms appeared were recorded. Results: Among the 229 patients, 31 (13.54%) had olfactory dysfunction, and 44 (19.21%) had gustatory dysfunction. For the patients with olfactory dysfunction, 6 (19.35%) developed severe disease and became critically ill. Olfactory dysfunction appeared before the other symptoms in 21.43% of cases. The proportion of females with olfactory and gustatory dysfunction was higher than that of males (P < 0.001). Conclusions: The incidence of olfactory and gustatory dysfunction was much lower than that reported abroad; the prognosis of patients with olfactory dysfunction is relatively favorable; olfactory and gustatory dysfunction can be used as a sign for early screening; females are more prone to olfactory and gustatory dysfunction.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Neonatal Nursing Practicum and Extended Reality Simulation Training Needs: A Descriptive and Cross-Sectional Study.

This study investigated the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) clinical practicum status during the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for extended reality (XR)-based training for neonatal care. A structured questionnaire was distributed to 132 prelicensing nursing students. Data were analyzed using importance-performance analysis and Borich needs analysis. Students wanted to use XR to learn about treating high-risk preterm infants. COVID-19 limited clinical training in NICUs, and most students preferred training in XR programs to improve their nursing competency for neonates. There is a large demand for nursing skills concerning high-risk newborns and hands-off training.

The Omicron variant wave: Where are we now and what are the prospects?

The Omicron variant BA.2 is the dominant form of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak in many countries, including those that have already implemented the strictest quarantine mandates that effectively contained the spread of the previous variants. Although many individuals were partially or fully vaccinated, confirmed Omicron infections have far surpassed all other variants combined in just a couple of months since the Omicron variant emerged. The ChAdOx1-S (AstraZeneca), BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech), and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccines offer protection against the severe illness of SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, these currently available vaccines are less effective in terms of preventing Omicron infections. As a result, a booster dose of BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 is recommended for individuals >12 years old who had received their second dose of the approved vaccines for >5 months. Herein, we review the studies that assessed the clinical benefits of the booster dose of vaccines against Omicron infections. We also analyzed public data to address whether early booster vaccination effectively prevented the surge of the Omicron infections. Finally, we discuss the consideration of a fourth dose of vaccine as a way to prevent possible upcoming infections.

Comparative transcriptomic analyzes of human lung epithelial cells infected with wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and its variant with a 12-bp missing in the E gene.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus that caused a global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To elucidate the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 replication and immunogenicity, we performed a comparative transcriptome profile of mRNA and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in human lung epithelial cells infected with the SARS-CoV-2 wild-type strain (8X) and the variant with a 12-bp deletion in the E gene (F8). In total, 3,966 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 110 differentially expressed lncRNA (DE-lncRNA) candidates were identified. Of these, 94 DEGs and 32 DE-lncRNAs were found between samples infected with F8 and 8X. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyzes revealed that pathways such as the TNF signaling pathway and viral protein interaction with cytokine and cytokine receptor were involved. Furthermore, we constructed a lncRNA-protein-coding gene co-expression interaction network. The KEGG analysis of the co-expressed genes showed that these differentially expressed lncRNAs were enriched in pathways related to the immune response, which might explain the different replication and immunogenicity properties of the 8X and F8 strains. These results provide a useful resource for studying the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Lockdown in Chinese university dormitories: Significant increase in negative feelings and time perception distortion

The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to a global crisis resulting in lockdowns worldwide. Studies found that these could amplify negative affects predictive of disturbances in time perception. However, all existing studies on this topic concentrated on the general population during a lockdown at home. There was no research on university students living in dormitories. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating the affective states and awareness of the passage of time of Chinese university students during an exceptional dormitory lockdown. Using a snowball sampling approach, this web‐based study recruited 225 volunteers (136 girls, 17−27 years old) during a dormitory lockdown. The online survey consisted of questions on demographic information, affective states (the Chinese version of the depression anxiety stress scales‐21 (DASS‐21) on depression, anxiety, and stress), and sense of the passage of time (the translated version of the assessment of passage of time over daily, weekly and yearly periods). The researchers shared the questionnaire link via the social media application WeChat. The study applied descriptive statistics and column charts to represent students' affective states and sense of the passage of time under extreme conditions and Pearson's correlation analysis to examine the impact of affective states on their sense of time. The study's results indicate that the dormitory lockdown caused a significant increase in all depression, anxiety, and stress categories of the DASS‐21, as well as a distortion of the sense of time passing. However, the direction of the distortion differed from that in previous studies. Moreover, a Pearson correlation analysis showed that none of the three negative affects could be associated with students' sense of time. The findings of this study indicate an increased vulnerability of students due to the lockdown. Their emotions were strongly affected, requiring particular interventions to preserve their mental well‐being. In addition, they showed a different distortion direction of time passage. Finally, they differed in the correlations between negative affect and the sense of passage of time compared to the general population in lockdown at home. This shows a need to investigate the impact of psychological states on students' routines and quality of life in emergencies. This study's scope should be expanded by incorporating additional factors pertaining to the passage of time and by integrating cross‐cultural comparisons. Practitioner Points 1. The dormitory lockdown caused a significant increase in all depression, anxiety, and stress categories of the DASS‐21.2. The dormitory lockdown caused a distortion of the sense of time passing, which differed from that in previous studies.3. None of the three negative affects could be associated with students' sense of time.

Comparative transcriptomic analyzes of human lung epithelial cells infected with wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and its variant with a 12-bp missing in the E gene

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus that caused a global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To elucidate the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 replication and immunogenicity, we performed a comparative transcriptome profile of mRNA and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in human lung epithelial cells infected with the SARS-CoV-2 wild-type strain (8X) and the variant with a 12-bp deletion in the E gene (F8). In total, 3,966 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 110 differentially expressed lncRNA (DE-lncRNA) candidates were identified. Of these, 94 DEGs and 32 DE-lncRNAs were found between samples infected with F8 and 8X. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyzes revealed that pathways such as the TNF signaling pathway and viral protein interaction with cytokine and cytokine receptor were involved. Furthermore, we constructed a lncRNA-protein-coding gene co-expression interaction network. The KEGG analysis of the co-expressed genes showed that these differentially expressed lncRNAs were enriched in pathways related to the immune response, which might explain the different replication and immunogenicity properties of the 8X and F8 strains. These results provide a useful resource for studying the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Effect of Wuhan's anti-COVID-19 lockdown on its pace of life and metaphorical temporal perspective.

The pace of life, as an indispensable aspect of microscopic culture, has been largely ignored by the academia for a long time. This study proposes that the emergent outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan put people there into a fight against time, leading to a speeding up of their pace of life. This might have affected their temporal perspective, regardless of the macroscopic regulation of Chinese culture. To this end, we designed an online questionnaire to gather data about Wuhan people's pace of life and temporal perspective, both during its lockdown and seven months after the lockdown. The results showed that people in while-lockdown Wuhan displayed a much faster pace of life and also a much higher tendency to choose the Moving Time perspective than people in Wuhan seven months after the lockdown. This suggests that the pace of life is not only regulated by specific culture macroscopically, but also by certain pressing events microscopically, and one's temporal perspective is affected by the changed pace of life. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40167-022-00113-4.

I did my part! How can I further minimize emerging adult learners’ burnout in an online learning environment?

Emerging adults are a crucial group in our society, and research indicates that they rarely consider themselves adults because their cognitive, social, and emotional capacities are undergoing transitionary changes, affecting how they learn. Prior studies have not considered sufficiently the characteristics and needs of emerging adult learners in an online environment. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the psychological needs and academic burnout of emerging adult online learners during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through self-determination theory (SDT) and Stimuli-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory, the key arguments and constructs include the effects of structural and social bonds on emerging adult learners' psychological needs, the effect of psychological needs on academic burnout, and the moderating roles of mindfulness. A valid sample of 294 collected through the survey was the basis of the analysis. PLS-SEM was used to analyse and test the hypotheses. Findings indicate that structural and social bonds affect psychological needs at varying strengths, which is generally consistent with prior findings but with different groups of learners. The moderating roles of mindfulness, however, were mixed. The model robustness further highlights the predictive analysis, which complements the exploratory perspective. This study contributes to the literature by identifying the predictors that fulfill the basic psychological needs of emerging adult learners and examining the effect of this fulfilment on the burnout during the online learning. In addition, this study implies how online trainers and educational institutions can build an optimal environment to reduce the burnout and then improve the learning effectiveness for emerging adult learners. Limitations, and agenda for future research were further discussed to conclude the study.

The effects of neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality: A quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice in neonatal intensive care units for nursing college students has been restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak; thus, the gamification program has emerged as an alternative learning method. Consequently, there is a need to examine the effectiveness of such alternative learning methods to enhance the response to high-risk newborn emergencies. OBJECTIVES: To examine the effects (neonatal resuscitation nursing knowledge, problem-solving and clinical reasoning ability, self-confidence in practical performance, degree of anxiety, and learning motivation) of a neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality based on Keller's ARCS model. DESIGN: A non-randomized controlled simulation study with a pretest-posttest design. SETTING: Lab and lecture rooms of two universities in South Korea, from June to November 2021. PARTICIPANTS: Prelicensure nursing students. METHODS: The virtual reality group (n = 29) underwent a neonatal resuscitation gamification program using virtual reality based on Keller's ARCS model. The simulation group (n = 28) received high-fidelity neonatal resuscitation simulations and online neonatal resuscitation program lectures. The control group (n = 26) only received online neonatal resuscitation program lectures. Changes in scores among these groups were compared using analysis of variance and analysis of covariance with SPSS for Windows version 27.0. RESULTS: Post intervention, neonatal resuscitation knowledge [F(2) = 3.83, p = .004] and learning motivation [F(2) = 1.79, p = .025] were significantly higher in the virtual reality and simulation groups than in the control group, whereas problem-solving ability [F(2) = 2.07, p = .038] and self-confidence [F(2) = 6.53, p < .001] were significantly higher in the virtual reality group than in the simulation and control groups. Anxiety [F(2) = 16.14, p < .001] was significantly lower in the simulation group than in the virtual reality and control groups. CONCLUSIONS: The neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality was found to be effective in increasing neonatal resuscitation knowledge, problem-solving ability, self-confidence, and learning motivation of the nursing students who participated in the trial application process.

Mobile Application Use and Loneliness among Older Adults in the Digital Age: Insights from a Survey in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Existing literature on the associations between use of mobile applications (i.e., mobile apps) and loneliness among older adults (OAs) has been mainly conducted before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since mobile apps have been increasingly used by OAs during the pandemic, subsequent effects on social and emotional loneliness need updated investigation. This paper examines the relationship between mobile app use and loneliness among Hong Kong's OAs during the pandemic. In our research, 364 OAs with current use experience of mobile apps were interviewed through a questionnaire survey conducted during July and August 2021, which assessed the use frequency and duration of 14 mobile app types and levels of emotional and social loneliness. The survey illustrated communication (e.g., WhatsApp) and information apps were the most commonly used. Emotional loneliness was associated with the use of video entertainment (frequency and duration), instant communication (duration), and information apps (duration). Association between video entertainment apps' use and emotional loneliness was stronger among older and less educated OAs. Our findings highlight the distinctive relationships between different types of apps and loneliness among Hong Kong's OAs during the pandemic, which warrant further exploration via research into post-pandemic patterns and comparative studies in other regions.

A convolutional neural network-based COVID-19 detection method using chest CT images.

Background: High-throughput population screening for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is critical to controlling disease transmission. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are a cutting-edge technology in the field of computer vision and may prove more effective than humans in medical diagnosis based on computed tomography (CT) images. Chest CT images can show pulmonary abnormalities in patients with COVID-19. Methods: In this study, CT image preprocessing are firstly performed using fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm to extracted the region of the pulmonary parenchyma. Through multiscale transformation, the preprocessed image is subjected to multi scale transformation and RGB (red, green, blue) space construction. After then, the performances of GoogLeNet and ResNet, as the most advanced CNN architectures, were compared in COVID-19 detection. In addition, transfer learning (TL) was employed to solve overfitting problems caused by limited CT samples. Finally, the performance of the models were evaluated and compared using the accuracy, recall rate, and F1 score. Results: Our results showed that the ResNet-50 method based on TL (ResNet-50-TL) obtained the highest diagnostic accuracy, with a rate of 82.7% and a recall rate of 79.1% for COVID-19. These results showed that applying deep learning technology to COVID-19 screening based on chest CT images is a very promising approach. This study inspired us to work towards developing an automatic diagnostic system that can quickly and accurately screen large numbers of people with COVID-19. Conclusions: We tested a deep learning algorithm to accurately detect COVID-19 and differentiate between healthy control samples, COVID-19 samples, and common pneumonia samples. We found that TL can significantly increase accuracy when the sample size is limited.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on infectious disease hospitalizations of neonates at a tertiary academic hospital: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: To investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases. METHODS: We analyzed data for neonatal inpatients admitted at a tertiary academic hospital with a principal diagnosis of an infectious disease during January 2015 to December 2020. We compared hospitalizations in 2020 (COVID-19 cohort), corresponding with the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and associated containment measures, and the comparable 2015 to 2019 (pre-COVID-19 cohort). RESULTS: 14,468 cases admitted for neonatal infectious diseases were included in our study, with 1201 cases in the COVID-19 cohort and 13,267 cases in the pre-COVID-19 cohort. The leading causes of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases remain being respiratory tract infections (median ratio = 0.461, 95% CI 0.335-0.551), sepsis (median ratio = 0.292, 95% CI 0.263-0.361), gastric intestinal infections (median ratio = 0.095, 95% CI 0.078-0.118) and dermatologic infections (median ratio = 0.058, 95% CI 0.047-0.083). The seasonality of neonatal infectious disease hospitalizations could be obviously observed, with the total number and the overall rate of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases in the first and fourth quarters greater than that of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases in the second and third quarters in each year (1362.67 ± 360.54 vs 1048.67 ± 279.23, P = 0.001; 8176/20020 vs 6292/19369, P < 0.001, respectively). Both the numbers and the proportions of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases in different quarters of the COVID-19 cohort significantly decreased as compared with those forecasted with the data from the pre-COVID-19 cohort: the numbers per quarter (300.25 ± 57.33 vs 546.64 ± 100.43, P-value = 0.006), the first quarter (0.34 vs 0.40, P = 0.002), the second quarter (0.24 vs 0.30, P = 0.001), the third quarter (0.24 vs 0.28, P = 0.024), and the fourth quarter (0.29 vs 0.35, P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the leading causes of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases remain unchanged. The seasonality of neonatal infectious disease hospitalizations could be obviously observed. The numbers as well as the overall rates of hospitalizations for neonatal infectious diseases in the COVID-19 cohort dramatically declined with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation measures.

Chemical constituents and biological activities of Artemisia argyi H.Lév. & vaniot.

Artemisia argyi is a widely distributed and inexpensive plant resource, and study on its chemical compositions and biological activities will provide an important basis for its food applications and pharmaceutical developments. In this study, fourteen known guaiane-type sesquiterpenes (1-14), four known eudesmane-type sesquiterpenes (15-18), two known germacranolide-type sesquiterpenes (19, 20), and eight other types of terpenoids (20-28) were isolated from the leaves of A. argyi by polyamide and ODS CC and HPLC. The structures of all compounds are determined by 1 D NMR (1H-NMR、13C-NMR) and literature comparison. Among them, compounds 1 and 8 were isolated from Chinese folk medicine A. argyi for the first time. Besides, the LPS-induced RAW264.7 cell model has been evaluated the anti-inflammatory activities in vitro by the Griess reagent. The results indicated that the guaianolide sesquiterpenoids obtained from A. argyi have an excellent ability to inhibit NO production, especially Argyin A, a guaianolide sesquiterpenoid with isovaleryloxy substitution.

The long-term consequences of Corona Virus Disease 2019 patients receiving Chinese herbal medicine treatments in acute phase: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: In December 2019, the first case of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 viral infection was described in Wuhan. Similar to SARS in 2003, COVID-19 also had a lasting impact. Approximately 76% of patients discharged after hospitalization for COVID-19 had neurological manifestations which could persist for 6 months, and some long-term consequences such as the gradual loss of lung function due to pulmonary interstitial fibrosis could have comprehensive effects on daily quality of life for people who were initially believed to have recovered from COVID-19. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Our comprehensive search strategy developed in consultation with a research librarian. We will search these following electronic databases: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Google Scholar, Embase, ProQuest, China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WANFANG DATA, WHO covid-19 website, and Centers for Disease Control and the Prevention COVID-19 websites of the United States and China. The bias of publication will be confirmed via the P value of Egger test. The quality of studies will be evaluated by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: There are no ethical considerations associated with this study protocol for this systematic review which mainly focuses on the examination of secondary data. On completion of this analysis, we will prepare a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021258711.