Post-COVID-19 pulmonary function tests in young health care workers in South Indian population – An observational study

Lungs being the earliest organ to be affected carry more risk of long-term morbidity. [...]pulmonary function tests (PFTs) on post-COVID young health care workers provide a better view on the impact, recovery and residual effects. [2] Till date, no pharmacological intervention has found to be completely effective in such cases. [...]it is important to follow-up patients with pulmonary function tests (PFT) even after the infective period. The improvement or deterioration in PFT along with sequelae can be adequately tested only with a routine follow-up. [...]the novelty of the project lies in focusing on health care workers with regards to COVID exposure, assessing the lung function tests. MATERIALS AND METHODS This observational and cross-sectional study was done in the department of pulmonary medicine of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Madurai for a period of 4 months between January and April 2021 after obtaining Institutional Ethical committee clearance.

Arduino based Touchless Temperature Sensing Visitor Notification System

The highly contagious COVID'19 virus's extensive distribution caused the pandemic, which intensified the importance of personal cleanliness and health. Wearing a protective face mask, keeping a certain physical distance, and regularly washing your hands with soap or hand sanitizer are a few precautions you may take to stay safe during this pandemic. An automatic touchless temperature-monitoring doorbell can provide guarded and touch-free temperature sensing, thus informing the household members. The widespread usage of outdated touch-type doorbells may result in the transmission of the coronavirus. The aforementioned article describes a novel approach to creating a Novel Doorbell system that can be activated using gestures and simultaneously detects the person's temperature and notifies the home of a suspected infectious disease. © 2023 IEEE.

Extraction-free clinical detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus from saline gargle samples using Hamilton STARlet liquid handler.

As part of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical laboratories have been faced with massive increases in testing, resulting in sample collection systems, reagent, and staff shortages. We utilized self-collected saline gargle samples to optimize high throughput SARS-CoV-2 multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing in order to minimize cost and technologist time. This was achieved through elimination of nucleic acid extraction and automation of sample handling on a widely available robotic liquid handler, Hamilton STARlet. A customized barcode scanning script for reading the sample ID by the Hamilton STARlet's software system was developed to allow primary tube sampling. Use of pre-frozen SARS-CoV-2 assay reaction mixtures reduced assay setup time. In both validation and live testing, the assay produced no false positive or false negative results. Of the 1060 samples tested during validation, 3.6% (39/1060) of samples required retesting as they were either single gene positive, had internal control failure or liquid aspiration error. Although the overall turnaround time was only slightly faster in the automated workflow (185 min vs 200 min), there was a 76% reduction in hands-on time, potentially reducing staff fatigue and burnout. This described process from sample self-collection to automated direct PCR testing significantly reduces the total burden on healthcare systems in terms of human resources and reagent requirements.

Exploration of Novel Lichen Compounds as Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro: Ligand-Based Design, Molecular Dynamics, and ADMET Analyses.

In the year 2019-2020, the whole world witnessed the spread of a disease called COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2. A number of effective drugs and vaccine has been formulated to combat this outbreak. For the development of anti-COVID-19 drugs, the main protease (Mpro) is considered a key target as it has rare mutations and plays a crucial role in the replication of the SARS CoV-2. In this study, a library of selected lichen compounds was prepared and used for virtual screening against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro using molecular docking, and several hits as potential inhibitors were identified. Remdesivir was used as a standard inhibitor of Mpro for its comparison with the identified hits. Twenty-six compounds were identified as potential hits against Mpro, and these were subjected to in silico ADMET property prediction, and the compounds having favorable properties were selected for further analysis. After manual inspection of their interaction with the binding pocket of Mpro and binding affinity score, four compounds, namely, variolaric acid, cryptostictinolide, gyrophoric acid, and usnic acid, were selected for molecular dynamics study to evaluate the stability of complex. The molecular dynamics results indicated that except cryptostictinolide, all the three compounds made a stable complex with Mpro throughout a 100-ns simulation time period. Among all, usnic acid seems to be more stable and effective against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. In summary, our findings suggest that usnic acid, variolaric acid, and gyrophoric acid have potential to inhibit SARS-Cov-2 Mpro and act as a lead compounds for the development of antiviral drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2.

Simulation of real-time medicine suggestion box for COVID screening

Technology advancements have a rapid effect on every field of life, be it medical field or any other field. Artificial intelligence has shown the promising results in health care through its decision making by analysing the data. COVID-19 has affected more than 100 countries in a matter of no time. People all over the world are vulnerable to its consequences in future. It is imperative to develop a control system that will detect the coronavirus. One of the solutions to control the current havoc can be the diagnosis of disease with the help of various AI tools. The proposed system contains textual data analysis as well as real time physiological data analysis concept. The embedded platform reads the body temperature and heart rate of the patients. The patient is automatically induced to attend the pre-screening survey designed using the software GUI that collects most of the information on symptoms persists. A COVID-19 dataset is collected from publicly available websites. The read survey values and sensor values are pre-processed and extracted the unique features present in it. Those unique parameters are compared with the database to produce the output showing COVID positive status or Negative status and immediate medicine suggestions for them using the global collective medicine suggestions box. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.

Digitally Connecting Consumers Mental Health and Behavior amid Pandemic

The covid-19 pandemic is likely to have a profound impact on mental health globally. This paper aims to explore the psychological perspectives that have affected consumer behavior during the life-changing social environment as a framework in consumer mental health research. The paper offers a history of consumer behavioral health studies and applications in the field of marketing, as well as an introduction to the theoretical and empirical framework for the study of consumer behavior in later life concerning consumption-related problems throughout life. A sample of 254 millennial consumers is used to test hypothesized relationships derived from the life course perspectives. The approach to the life course, designed to analyze the various facets of consumer behavior, offers a basis for filling holes in prior analysis to study consumer behavior over time. The author introduces a life-course concept that offers an insight applicable to the life-course paradigm of consumer behavior research. In the present context, it has already increased feelings of stress, peers, economic status has given rise to a range of digital and other interventions to help people cope with the “new normal”, the researchers need to illustrate how the life course approach might innovatively contribute to existing studies © Review Of International Geographical Education

Evaluation of observed and unobserved self-collection of saline gargle samples for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in outpatients.

The diagnostic sensitivity of observed and unobserved self-collected saline gargle samples for the molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2 in adults and school-aged children was evaluated against a reference standard of health care worker collected nasopharyngeal flocked swab. A total of 46 participants had a positive nasopharyngeal swab sample; of these, 10 were in the observed phase and 36 were in the unobserved phase. Only one matching saline gargle sample tested negative and this was in the unobserved phase, giving an overall sensitivity of 98%. Average viral target Ct values were higher in the saline gargle samples. RNaseP Ct values were lower in unobserved collected samples compared to observed collected samples. Unobserved self-collection of saline gargle samples is a promising outpatient testing method for COVID-19 diagnosis. The self-collection method has potential to simplify the diagnostic cycle and facilitate implementation of COVID-19 testing, particularly in settings with limited access to health care workers.

SARS-CoV-2: characterisation and mitigation of risks associated with aerosol generating procedures in dental practices.

Introduction The objectives were to characterise the particle size distribution of aerosols generated by standard dental aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) and to assess the impact of aerosol-management interventions on 'fallow time'. Interventions included combinations of high-volume intraoral suction (HVS[IO]), high-volume extraoral suction (HVS[EO]) and an air cleaning system (ACS).Method A sequence of six AGPs were performed on a phantom head. Real-time aerosol measurements (particle size range 0.0062-9.6 µm) were acquired from six locations within a typical dental treatment room (35 m3).Results The majority (>99%) of AGP particles were <0.3 µm diameter and remained at elevated levels around the dental team during the AGPs. With no active aerosol-management interventions, AGP particles were estimated to remain above the baseline range for up to 30 minutes from the end of the sequence of procedures.Conclusions The results emphasise the importance of personal protection equipment, particularly respiratory protection. Use of HVS(IO), either alone or in combination with the ACS, reduced particle concentrations to baseline levels on completion of AGPs. These data indicate potential to eliminate fallow time. The study was performed using a phantom head so confirmatory studies with patients are required.

A global review of obesity

Obesity is major health problem and are defined as abnormal or excessive amount of fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A body mass index (BMI) over 24 is considered overweight, and over 30 is obese. obesity are main risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, like cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke, which are the leading causes of death worldwide. Over 800 million people around the world are living with obesity. The medical consequences of obesity will cost over $1 trillion by 2025.People living with obesity are twice as likely to be hospitalized if tested positive for COVID-19. The weight loss segments are one of the major contributors to the overall revenue of the dietary supplements in market. Anti-obesity drugs are used as pharmacological agents which reduce or control body weight. These drugs can change one of the fundamental processes of the human body or weight regulation by altering either appetite or absorption of calories. The treatment for obese patients is dieting and physical exercise. An anti-obesity drug have produce sustained weight loss with minimal side effects.

Development and validation of a new triplex real-time quantitative reverse Transcriptase-PCR assay for the clinical detection of SARS-CoV-2.

To increase the repertoire of PCR based laboratory developed tests (LDTs) for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, we describe a new multiplex assay (SORP), targeting the SARS-CoV-2's, Spike and ORF8 genes. The widely used human RNaseP internal control was modified to specifically co-amplify the RNaseP mRNA. The SORP triplex assay was tested on a cohort (n = 372; POS = 144/NEG = 228) of nasopharyngeal flocked swab (NPFS) specimens, previously tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 using a PCR assay targeting E and RdRp genes. The overall sensitivity and specificity of the SORP assay was: 99.31% (95% CI: 96.22-99.98%), 100.0% (95% CI: 98.4-100%) respectively. The SORP assay could also detect a panel of variants of concern (VOC) from the B1.1.7 (UK) and B1.351 (SA) lineage. In summary, access to a repertoire of new SARS-CoV-2 LDT's would assist diagnostic laboratories in developing strategies to overcome some of the testing issues encountered during high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 testing.

Self-Collected Saline Gargle Samples as an Alternative to Health Care Worker-Collected Nasopharyngeal Swabs for COVID-19 Diagnosis in Outpatients.

We assessed the performance, stability, and user acceptability of swab-independent self-collected saliva and saline mouth rinse/gargle sample types for the molecular detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in adults and school-aged children. Outpatients who had recently been diagnosed with COVID-19 or were presenting with suspected COVID-19 were asked to have a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab collected and provide at least one self-collected sample type. Participants were also asked about sample acceptability using a five-point Likert scale. For those previously diagnosed with COVID-19, all samples underwent real-time PCR testing using a lab-developed assay, and the majority were also tested using an FDA-authorized assay. For those presenting with suspected COVID-19, only those with a positive nasopharyngeal swab sample went on to have other samples tested. Saline mouth rinse/gargle and saliva samples were tested daily at time zero, day 1, and day 2 to assess nucleic acid stability at room temperature. Fifty participants (aged 4 to 71 years) were included; of these, 40 had at least one positive sample and were included in the primary sample yield analysis. Saline mouth rinse/gargle samples had a sensitivity of 98% (39/40), while saliva samples had a sensitivity of 79% (26/33). Both saline mouth rinse/gargle and saliva samples showed stable viral RNA detection after 2 days of room temperature storage. Mouth rinse/gargle samples had the highest (mean, 4.9) and health care worker (HCW)-collected NP swabs had the lowest acceptability scores (mean, 3.1). In conclusion, saline mouth rinse/gargle samples demonstrated higher combined user acceptability ratings and analytical performance than saliva and HCW-collected NP swabs. This sample type is a promising swab-independent option, particularly for outpatient self-collection in adults and school-aged children.

Self-collected Saline Gargle Samples as an Alternative to Healthcare Worker Collected Nasopharyngeal Swabs for COVID-19 Diagnosis in Outpatients (preprint)

Background: We assessed the performance, stability, and user acceptability of swab-independent self-collected saliva and saline mouth rinse/gargle sample types for the molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2 in adults and school-aged children. Methods: Outpatients who had recently been diagnosed with COVID-19 or were presenting with suspected COVID-19 were asked to have a nasopharyngeal swab collected and provide at least one self-collected sample type. A portion of participants were also asked about sample acceptability. Samples underwent molecular testing using multiple assays. Saline mouth rinse/gargle and saliva samples were tested daily at time zero, day one, and day 2 to assess nucleic acid stability at room temperature. Results: 50 participants (aged 4 to 71 years) were included; of these, 40 had at least one positive sample and were included in the primary sample yield analysis. Saline mouth rinse/gargle samples had a sensitivity of 98% (39/40) while saliva samples had a sensitivity of 79% (26/33). Both saline mouth rinse/gargle and saliva samples showed stable viral RNA detection after 2 days of room temperature storage. Mouth rinse/gargle samples had the highest (mean 4.9) and HCW-collected NP swabs had the lowest acceptability scores (mean 3.1). Conclusion: Saline mouth rinse/gargle samples demonstrated the highest combined user acceptability ratings and analytical performance when compared with saliva and HCW collected NP swabs. This sample type is a promising swab-independent option, particularly for outpatient self-collection in adults and school aged children.