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BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is ravaging the world. To date, there are no standard therapies available to cure the disease. Consequently, research on COVID-19 vaccines is booming. This report aimed to assess the research trends of the global COVID-19 vaccines. METHODS: The relevant publications on the COVID-19 vaccines were searched in the Web of Science Core Collection Database (WOSCC) database from December 2019 to 11 August 2021. The VOSviewer1.6.16 was used to assess the co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation of countries, institutions, authors, journals, and hotspot keywords. The HistCiteTM (http://www.histcite.com/) software was used to calculate the total local citation score (TLCS) and total global citation score (TGCS) of each variable and generate the citation historiography graph of COVID-19 vaccine development using the citation time series analysis method. RESULTS: A total of 5070 studies authored by 21,151 researchers and published by 1364 different journals were eventually included in this study. The bulk of the retrieved studies were original articles (n = 2401, 47.36%). Among these studies, 1204 (23.75%) were published in 2020. A total of 3863 (76.19%) were published in 2021 and 4295 (84.71%) were open access. The highest number of studies was conducted in the USA, followed by England, China, and Germany. The main partners of the USA were China, England, and Canada. The University of Maryland (TLCS: 1618, TGCS: 2991) and Prof. Ugur Sahin from the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University (TLCS: 1397, TGCS: 2407) were the most cited institution and author, respectively. The vaccines featured the highest number of papers, with 294 publications (TLCS: 0, TGCS: 1226). The most cited journal was the New England Journal of Medicine (TLCS: 3310, TGCS: 5914), with an impact factor (IF) of 91.245. The related topics included the following six aspects: attitudes towards vaccination, immunoinformatics analysis, clinical research, effectiveness and side effects, and the public management of vaccines. The timing diagram revealed that the research hotspots focused on the side effects of vaccines and public attitude towards vaccination. CONCLUSION: This novel comprehensive bibliometric analysis can help researchers and non-researchers to rapidly identify the potential partners, landmark studies, and research topics within their domains of interest. Through this study, we hope to provide more data to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Background The mechanisms associated with COVID-19 in children are not well understood. We sought to define the differences in nasopharyngeal (NP) cytokine profiles according to clinical presentation in children with COVID-19. Methods Single-center, prospective study in 137 children and adolescents < 21 years of age hospitalized with COVID-19, and 35 age, sex and race matched pre-pandemic (2016-2019) healthy controls. Children with COVID-19 were categorized according to their clinical presentation in: COVID-19-symptomatic;COVID-19-screening, and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). NP swabs were obtained within 24 hours of admission to measure SARS-CoV-2 loads by rt-PCR, and a 92-cytokine panel. Unsupervised and supervised analysis adjusted for multiple comparisons were performed. Results From 3/2020 to 1/2021, we enrolled 76 COVID-19-symptomatic children (3.5 [0.2-15.75] years);45 COVID-19-screening (11.1 [4.2-16.1] years), and 16 MIS-C (11.2 [5.9-14.6] years). Median NP SARS-CoV-2 loads were higher in COVID-19-symptomatic versus screening and MIS-C (6.8 vs 3.5 vs 2.82 log10 copies/mL;p< 0.001). Statistical group comparisons identified 15 cytokines that consistently differed between groups and were clustered in three functional categories: (1) antiviral/regulatory, (2) pro-inflammatory/chemotactic, and (3) a combination of (1) and (2);(Fig 1). All 15 cytokines were higher in COVID-19-symptomatic versus controls (p< 0.05). Similarly, and except for TNF, CCL3, CCL4 and CCL23, which were comparable in COVID-19-symptomatic and screening patients, the remaining cytokines were higher in symptomatic children (p< 0.05). PDL-1 (p=0.01) and CCL3 (p=0.03) were the only cytokines significantly decreased in children with MIS-C versus symptomatic COVID-19 children. The 15 cytokines identified by multiple comparisons were correlated using Person’s in R software. Red reflects a positive correlation and blue a negative correlation with the intensity of the color indicating the strength of the association. Conclusion Children with symptomatic COVID-19 demonstrated higher viral loads and greater mucosal cytokines concentrations than those identified via screening, whereas in MIS-C concentrations of regulatory cytokines were decreased. Simultaneous evaluation of viral loads and mucosal immune responses using non-invasive sampling could aid with the stratification of children and adolescents with COVID-19 in the clinical setting. Disclosures Octavio Ramilo, MD, Adagio (Consultant)Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Grant/Research Support)Janssen (Grant/Research Support)Lilly (Consultant)Merck (Consultant, Grant/Research Support)NIH (Grant/Research Support)Pfizer (Consultant)SANOFI (Board Member) Asuncion Mejias, MD, PhD, MsCS, Janssen (Grant/Research Support, Advisor or Review Panel member)Merck (Grant/Research Support, Advisor or Review Panel member)Roche (Advisor or Review Panel member)Sanofi (Advisor or Review Panel member).
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Objective: To explore the clinical characteristics and risk factors of mortality in the elderly patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia(COVID-19).
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In patients with COVID-19,type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) can impair the function of nasal-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT) and result in olfactory dysfunction. Exploring the causative alterations of T2DM within the nasal mucosa and NALT could provide insight into the pathogenic mechanisms and bridge the gap between innate immunity and adaptive immunity for virus clearance. Here, we designed a case-control study to compare the olfactory function (OF) among the groups of normal control (NC), COVID-19 mild pneumonia (MP), and MP patients with T2DM (MPT) after a 6-8 months' recovery, in which MPT had a higher risk of hyposmia than MP and NC. No significant difference was found between the MP and NC. This elevated risk of hyposmia indicated that T2DM increased COVID-19 susceptibility in the nasal cavity with unknown causations. Therefore, we used the T2DM animal model (db/db mice) to evaluate how T2DM increased COVID-19 associated susceptibilities in the nasal mucosa and lymphoid tissues. Db/db mice demonstratedupregulated microvasculature ACE2 expression and significant alterations in lymphocytes component of NALT. Specifically, db/db mice NALT had increased immune-suppressive TCRγδ+ CD4-CD8- T and decreased immune-effective CD4+/CD8+ TCRß+ T cells and decreased mucosa-protective CD19+ B cells. These results indicated that T2DM could dampen the first-line defense of nasal immunity, and further mechanic studies of metabolic damage and NALT restoration should be one of the highest importance for COVID-19 healing.