ABSTRACT
Background: COVID-19 has become one of the biggest challenges globally, yet no specifically effective medication has been developed. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exhibit properties of immune regulation and regeneration, which may suppress the over-inflammatory response and promote recovery of lung damage caused by COVID-19 and offer the potential as a therapeutic option. Methods: At the very beginning of COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, we investigated the use of human umbilical cord-derived MSCs (hUC-MSCs) as a salvage therapy in five severe COVID-19 patients, with each patient receiving intravenous infusion of hUC-MSCs three times. Results: All patients showed significant improvement in clinical manifestations, including laboratory biomarkers and findings of lung computed tomography images, after at least one dose of MSC therapy. Conclusion: These results suggest that MSC therapy is safe and can reduce the inflammatory response and alleviate the clinical symptoms of critically ill COVID-19 patients.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Lung DiseasesABSTRACT
Background: Emerging infectious disease have brought a huge impact on human society in recent years. The outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV) in the Americas resulted in a large number of babies born with microcephaly. More seriously, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused the global spreads and immeasurable damages. Thus, the monitoring of highly pathogenic virus is of significance to the prevention and control of emerging infectious disease.ResultsHerein, a dendritic polymer probe-amplified ECL-scan imaging system was constructed to realize trace analysis of viral emerging infectious disease. Dendritic polymer probe was employed as the efficient signal giving-out component that could generate amplified electrochemiluminescence (ECL) signal on the integrated chip. And the signal was detected by a single-photon level charge coupled device-based ECL-scan imaging system. With this strategy,the ZIKV in the complex system of blood, urine and saliva were detected. The results indicated that high sensitivity of 50 copies and superior specificity were achieved. Furthermore, this strategy realized highly sensitive detection (10 copies) of S and N protein gene sequence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov2) and spiked pseudovirus samples.ConclusionsThus, the dendritic polymer probe-amplified ECL-scan imaging system suitably met the strict clinical-requirements for trace analysis of emerging virus, and thus has the potential to serve as a paradigm for monitoring of emerging infectious disease.