Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on stress response and job burnout of head nurses in the context of Coronavirus disease 2019

Objective To explore the efforts of applying mindfulness stress reduction therapy in alleviating stress reactions and burnout among head nurses in the context of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods This was a quasi experimental study. In June 2021, 109 head nurses with mild or above burnout measured by Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) from 12 hospitals in Zhangjiagang City were selected as the research objects to implement mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy for 8 weeks, and the scores of the Five Facet Mindfulness Question-naire (FFMQ), Stress Response Questionnaire (SRQ) and MBI of the head nurses were compared before and after the intervention. Results The five dimensions of observation, description, perceived action, non-judgment, and non-response and the total scores of the FFMQ were (26.28 ± 1.32), (26.94 ± 1.29), (25.49 ± 0.99), (25.45 ± 1.05), (23.48 ± 1.01), and (127.63 ± 3.78) of the post-intervention, which were higher than the pre-intervention scores of (25.04 ± 1.37), (25.04 ± 1.37), (25.37 ± 1.18), (24.15 ± 1.00), (24.09 ± 0.98), (22.26 ± 1.04), and (120.90 ± 4.06), with statistically significant differences (t values were -39.21- -15.36, all P＜0.01). The three dimensions of emotional, somatic, and behavioral responses and total scores of the post-intervention SRQ were (27.70 ± 6.12), (20.75 ± 4.20), (15.19 ± 3.11), and (65.99 ± 12.43), respectively, lower than the pre-intervention scores of (29.19 ± 6.91), (21.86 ± 5.20), (16.48 ± 4.16), and (70.12 ± 15.97), with statistically significant differences (t values were 5.70-9.33, all P＜0.01);the scores of dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in post-intervention MBI were (26.24 ± 4.60) and (5.96 ± 1.25), lower than the pre-intervention scores of (29.66 ± 6.02) and (6.90 ± 1.59). The post-intervention scores of personal fulfillment (32.37 ± 5.02), higher than the pre-intervention scores of (28.60 ± 6.04), all with statistically significant differences (t=15.36, 13.50, - 9.65, all P＜0.01). Conclusions The implementation of mindfulness stress reduction therapy for the head nurses can relieve their work pressure due to the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic, reshape their healthy psychology, and reduce job burnout. © The Author(s) 2023.

PDRF-Net: a progressive dense residual fusion network for COVID-19 lung CT image segmentation

The lungs of patients with COVID-19 exhibit distinctive lesion features in chest CT images. Fast and accurate segmentation of lesion sites from CT images of patients' lungs is significant for the diagnosis and monitoring of COVID-19 patients. To this end, we propose a progressive dense residual fusion network named PDRF-Net for COVID-19 lung CT segmentation. Dense skip connections are introduced to capture multi-level contextual information and compensate for the feature loss problem in network delivery. The efficient aggregated residual module is designed for the encoding-decoding structure, which combines a visual transformer and the residual block to enable the network to extract richer and minute-detail features from CT images. Furthermore, we introduce a bilateral channel pixel weighted module to progressively fuse the feature maps obtained from multiple branches. The proposed PDRF-Net obtains good segmentation results on two COVID-19 datasets. Its segmentation performance is superior to baseline by 11.6% and 11.1%, and outperforming other comparative mainstream methods. Thus, PDRF-Net serves as an easy-to-train, high-performance deep learning model that can realize effective segmentation of the COVID-19 lung CT images. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Research progress on host restriction factors of respiratory viruses.

Respiratory viruses can cause a variety of serious respiratory infections and diseases of tissues and organs outside the respiratory tract, raising a potentially severe threat to the society.Virus replication and survival rely on the internal mechanism of host cells, and the latter also produce a variety of restriction factors that target viral invasion, genome transcription and replication, and assembly and release to block viral infection.Herein, this study reviewed the research progress of the antiviral effects of the host restriction factors of common respiratory viruses and their underlying mechanisms.Copyright © 2021 Chinese Medical Journals Publishing House Co.Ltd. All rights reserved.

DNN and Model Combined Passive Localization and Social Distancing with Partial Inertial Aiding

At the outbreak of COVID-19, researchers worldwide are seeking approaches to containing this disease. It is necessary to monitor social distance in enclosed public areas, such as subways or shopping malls. Passive localization, such as surveillance cameras, is a natural candidate for this issue, which is meaningful for rapid response to finding the infected suspect. However, the latest surveillance camera system is rotatable, even movable. And it is impossible for professionals to regularly calibrate the extrinsic parameters in a large-scale application, like COVID-19 suspect monitoring. We propose an inertial-aided passive localization method using surveillance camera for social distance measurement without the necessity to obtain extrinsic parameters. Moreover, the hardware modification cost of the off-the-shelf commercial camera is low, which suits the immediate application. The method uses SGBM (Semi-Global Block Matching) for 3D reconstruction and combines YOLOv3 and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) clustering algorithm to extract pedestrian point clouds in real time. Combining the 2D DNN-based and model-based methods makes a better balance between the computational load and the detection accuracy than end-to-end 3D DNN-based method. The inertial sensor provides an extra observation for the coordinate transformation from the camera frame into the world ground frame. Results show we can get a decimeter-level social distancing accuracy under noisy background and foreground environments at a low cost, which is promising for urgent COVID-19 public area monitoring. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The relationship between complement changes with vaccination and length of stay in COVID-19 patients

Objective To investigate whether the complement system of COVID-19 is affected by vaccination, and also to explore the relationship between complement and length of stay in hospital, with a view to providing input for clinical diagnosis and the management of COVID-19 patients. Methods The patients admitted from November 1st to November 30th, 2021 in the Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University were selected as subjects. According to the time of vaccination, the patients were divided into two groups as vaccinated within half a year and over half a year. Then C3, C4, IgG, IgM, IgA, COVID-19 IgG and IgM, neutral granulocyte and lymphocyte count were detected and all patients' hospitalized days were recorded. With their hospitalization days of 14 d as a threshold, the patients were divided into two groups, and the above indicators were compared. Results C3 concentration was (0.86±0.157) g/L in patients with vaccination within six months, which is significantly lower than (0.96±0.172) g/L in those over six months (P<0.05), but as for C4, IgG, IgM, IgA, COVID-19 IgG and IgM, neutral granulocyte and lymphocyte counts, there were no significant difference between two groups;as for the patients within 14 days of hospitalization, C3 and C4 concentrations were lower than those for more than 14 days, but the COVID-19 antibody IgG and IgM, lymphocyte counts were higher (all P<0.05). Conclusion Vaccination within half a year can make the body's immune function and complement system to identify viruses earlier, more beneficial to remove viruses, but this effect is weakened after half a year;when admission, C3, C4, COVID-19 IgG level and lymphocyte counts can be used to predict hospitalization time in COVID-19 patients. © 2022 by the Author(s).

Inhibitory activity of copper gluconate and disulfiram against papain-like protease of SARS-CoV-2

Aim To investigate the inhibitory effect of copper gluconate and disulfiran on the PLpro of SARS-CoV-2 and to explore the effect of combination of them on PLpro.Methods SARS-CoV-2 PLpro was purified by recombinant expression technology of he effects of copper gluconate and disulfiram on PLpro activity were studied by enzyme kinetic method.Results Copper gluconate and disulfiram had high inhibitory activity on SARS-CoV-2 PLpro,Ubiquitin-7-Amino-4-methylcoumarin(Ub-AMC)was used as the fluorescent substrate.The IC50 of copper gluconate was 33.02 nmol.L-1,showing competitive inhibition,and the IC50 of disulfiram was 480.4 nmol.L-1,showing non competitive inhibition,and the combination of the two inhibitors showed the advantage of synergistic inhibition.Conclusions Copper gluconate and disulfiram have a high inhibitory effect on SARS-CoV-2 PLpro protein,and the combination shows the advantage of synergistic inhibition. Copyright © 2022 Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.

[Analysis of liver function injury associated with 2019-nCoV Omicron mutant strains].

Objective: To investigate the clinical features and influencing factors of liver function injury in patients with 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 Omicron mutant strains. Methods: 1 183 confirmed imported cases of SARS-CoV-2 who were admitted at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center (affiliated to Fudan University) from July 1, 2021 to January 15, 2022 were collected. Clinical data, viral genotyping and laboratory test results were collected to retrospectively analyze the basic condition and clinical characteristics of liver function injury. Statistical analysis was performed using t-test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test, χ2 test or Fisher's exact test, Pearson correlation test and logistic regression analysis. Results: 125 (10.6%) cases had raised baseline ALT level and 60 (5.1%) cases had abnormal baseline AST level. Among them, 33 cases (2.8%) had received hepatoprotective drugs. Liver function injury was generally mild in SARS-CoV-2 infection and minimal in Omicron mutant strains. Leukocyte count was increased in patients with raised alanine aminotransferase (ALT) [(6.96±1.78)×109/L vs. (6.41±1.96)×109/L, P=0.005 2], CT scan showed the proportion of liver hypodensity was significantly increased (2.4% vs. 0.3%, P=0.018 0). High-sensitivity C-reactive protein [(7.83±22.36) mg/L vs. (2.68±6.21) mg/L, P=0.007 8] and D-dimer [(0.34±0.39) µg/ml vs. (0.31±0.75) µg/ml, P=0.047 5] levels were higher in patients with raised AST than normal group. 26 cases had normal liver function at hospital admission; however, abnormal liver function was occurred during the course of the disease. Another 8 patients had abnormal liver function at hospital admission, and reduced liver function further during the course of treatment. Recovery time and length of hospital stay was significantly affected in patients with worsened liver function. Baseline body mass index value [odds ratio (OR)]=1.80, P=0.047), non-Omicron strains (OR=12.63, P=0.046), D-dimer (OR=2.36, P=0.047) and interleukin-6 levels (OR=1.03, P=0.009), and those who used glucocorticoids and/or ulinastatin after hospital admission (OR=6.89, P=0.034) had a higher risk of worsening liver function. Conclusions: Liver dysfunction could be observed among COVID-19 patients. Patients infected with omicron variant generally showed mild liver injury. Dynamic monitoring of liver function is necessary, especially among those with baseline elevated IL-6, D-Dimer level and use of antiinflammation medication during treatment.

Research progress on host restriction factors of respiratory viruses

Respiratory viruses can cause a variety of serious respiratory infections and diseases of tissues and organs outside the respiratory tract, raising a potentially severe threat to the society.Virus replication and survival rely on the internal mechanism of host cells, and the latter also produce a variety of restriction factors that target viral invasion, genome transcription and replication, and assembly and release to block viral infection.Herein, this study reviewed the research progress of the antiviral effects of the host restriction factors of common respiratory viruses and their underlying mechanisms. © 2021 Chinese Medical Journals Publishing House Co.Ltd. All rights reserved.

Clinical features of COVID‑19 in patients with prominent digestive symptoms

Objective: To analyze the clinical characteristics of COVID‑19 in the patients with predominant digestive symptoms and to discuss related clinical issues. Methods: A retrospective clinical analysis was performed on 638 discharged patients with confirmed COVID‑19 from January 30, 2020 to March 10, 2020, to collect their basic information, first symptoms, laboratory results, nucleic acid test, disease severity, and outcomes. Results: Of the 638 patients with COVID‑19, fever was the most common first symptom. There were 87 cases (13.6%) with obvious digestive symptoms and 551 cases (86.4%) without digestive symptoms, of which, diarrhea was the most common (67.8%) one. As compared with those without predominant digestive symptoms, these COVID cases were younger in age, had higher rate of cough (65.5%), higher maximum body temperature, and higher proportion of WBC counts <4.0×109/L. However, patients without gastrointestinal symptoms had a higher level of ultra‑troponin I. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of gender composition, fever, sputum, chest pain, chest tightness, dyspnea, and basic diseases. Meanwhile, no statistical difference was found between the two groups in most laboratory results, duration of viral shedding, the production of specific antibodies, characteristics of chest CT imaging, disease severity, and death rate. Conclusion: The diarrhea‑mainly digestive symptoms were the first‑episode symptoms in some patients with COVID‑19, their clinical characteristics and the courses were generally similar to those without obvious digestive symptoms. In view of the fact that some patients have positive nucleic acid test on anal swab and there is a risk of gastrointestinal transmission, the clinical care requirements and difficulties have increased for such patients. © 2022, Editorial Board of Medical Journal of Wuhan University. All right reserved.

Epidemic characteristics of 69 COVID-19 cases in Lu’an city

Objective To explore the epidemic characteristics of COVID-19 in Lu’an city, so as to provide scientific basis for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in this area. Methods All the confirmed cases of COVID-19 were selected from the Infectious Disease Reporting System from the onset of disease to 24:00 on February 18th, 2020 in Lu’an City. The general demographic, onset and medical information, and epidemiological characteristics of confirmed cases were collected to describe the feature of patients. The spatial and temporal distribution of disease transmission was analyzed by SaTScan 9.6.0.0 software, and Excel 2010 software was used to draw the epidemic curves of all cases. Results A total of 69 confirmed cases were reported in Lu’an City by February 18th, 2020. There were more male cases (44) than female (25), and cases mainly aged 36-45 years old (37.68%). The proportion of workers was the highest (24.64%). The first symptom of conformed cases was fever (50, 72.46%), cough (25, 36.23%) and fatigue (12, 17.40%). The epidemic was more serious in Jinzhai County (23), Huoshan County (17) and Huoqiu County (13). The number of cases in Lu’an showed that the first epidemic peak occurred between January 25th and January 28th, and the largest number of cases occurred on January 27th, then showed a downward trend. A total of 45 aggregate cases were found. Conclusion The COVID-19 epidemic in Lu’an City is generally preventable and controllable. It will be alert to the risk of family clustering, spread of asymptomatic infections and imported cases. Future work should focus on the investigation of close contacts. © 2021, Publication Centre of Anhui Medical University. All rights reserved.

Commanding Cooperative UGV-UAV with Nested Vehicle Routing for Emergency Resource Delivery

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used in delivery. In the context of the COVID-2019, in order to control the development of the epidemic, many places have adopted measures to isolate and close the area once a confirmed case is found. While reducing the contact between people, it also blocks the normal driving of vehicles. Only by changing the traditional logistics and distribution methods can customers who have been in a closed and isolated area for a long time be served. Therefore, we use the Cooperative UGV-UAV to achieve it. In this article, when commanding cooperative UGV and UAV for emergency resource delivery, we mainly focus on two questions: How to accept the operation order (OPORD) from the commander, how to generate a nested vehicle routing planning. We first employ one intelligent task understanding module to drive the intelligent unmanned vehicles to accept and process the C-BML (Coalition Battle Management Language) formatted OPORD with 5W (what, who, where, why, when) elements. Then, we slove the nested vehicle routing planning problem as a mixed integer linear program (MILP) with the outputs of what is the UGV route, what is the UGV sortie, and how to control the customers' distribution between the UGV and the UAV. Experimental results of random instances and case study show that using the iterative improvement algorithm increase the speed rate of solving more than 10%. © 2020 IEEE.

Coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic trend prediction based on improved infectious disease dynamics susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model

Objective To predict the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic situation based on the infectious disease dynamics susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model, so as to provide guidance for effective control of the epidemic. Methods Python crawler automatic update function was used to collect the epidemic data released by the National Health Commission of China. An improved infectious disease dynamics SEIR model, which can automatically correct the COVID-19 basic reproductive number (R0), was constructed to predict the development trend of COVID-19 epidemic in Hubei Province of China and South Korea. Results The peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Hubei Province of China predicted by the model would appear on Feb. 21, 2020. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases would be about 50 000 on Feb. 19 and would fall to below 30 000 on Mar. 4, and the epidemic would end on May 10. According to the actual data released by the National Health Commission of China, the peak number of confirmed COVID-19 patients was 53 371. The model predicted that an epidemic peak in South Korea would be on Mar. 7, and would end at the end of April. Conclusion This improved infectious disease dynamics SEIR model established in the early stage of COVID-19 epidemic has achieved relatively accurate prediction. The timely and effective intervention by relevant government departments has significantly affected the development of the epidemic. The epidemic situation in other countries in East Asia, such as South Korea, is still on the rise in March, suggesting that China needs to be on guard against the risk of imported epidemic.

Clinical interventions for severe and critical COVID-19: What are the options

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been ongoing outbreak and declared as a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization. Severe and critical COVID-19 has high fatality rate due to complications like acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute respiratory failure or multiple organ failure. So far, there have been mounting research on the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19. However, the information regarding treatment of severe and critical COVID-19 is limited. The current study reviewed published evidence of clinical interventions of severe and critical COVID-19, aiming to provide an up-to-date reference for further clinical treatment.