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The 17th National Annual Conference on Neurological Infectious Diseases and Cerebrospinal Fluid Cytology of the Chinese Medical Association Neurology Branch was successfully held in Wuhan, Hubei, China. During the conference, many well-known neurology experts in China conducted in-depth and detailed discussions on the research progress of infectious diseases of the nervous system and cerebrospinal fluid cytology, which benefited the participants a lot.Copyright © 2021
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Introduction/Objective Kidney injury has now become one of the known complications following COVID-19 infection and vaccination. Only few cases of minimal change disease following administration of COVID-19 vaccination and infection have been reported. This study was to highlight incidence of minimal change disease following COVID-19 infection or vaccination. Methods/Case Report Case 1:15 year-old female with past medical history of asthma and hypercholesterolemia presented for evaluation of periorbital edema, nephrotic-range proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, elevated serum creatinine, elevated blood pressures, and hematuria after COVID-19 infection. Renal biopsy after 1 week of infection showed unremarkable glomeruli and negative immunofluorescent stains in glomeruli, and 20-30% fusion of foot processes. The biopsy was consistent with a minimal change disease with features of natural remission (her nephrotic-range proteinuria resolved soon after). Case 2: 18 year-old female with no significant past medical history presented with a chief complaint of generalized swelling, which started around the same time she received her 1st dose of Pfizer COVID vaccine (the 2nd dose 2 months later). She had a nephrotic range proteinuria and hypoalbuminemia, but normal level of serum creatinine. A renal biopsy after 4 months of vaccination showed unremarkable glomeruli by light microscopy, negative immunofluorescent study, but diffuse effacement of foot processes involving more than 80% of the examined loops by electron microscopy. This biopsy findings were consistent with a minimal change disease. Both patients did not receive any treatment before the renal biopsies. Results (if a Case Study enter NA) NA Conclusion Minimal change disease can be a rare complication following COVID-19 infection or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination, raising a question if there are similar antigens induced by the infection or by the vaccination that trigger the minimal change disease. Further studies are needed to determine the incidence and pathophysiology of minimal change disease either post COVID-19 vaccines or following COVID-19 infections.
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Introduction/Objective COVID-19 vaccine-related lymphadenopathy, particularly in the ipsilateral axilla, is a relatively well-known side effect of mRNA vaccines with many reports in radiology, but less is known regarding histopathology and additional sites of lymphadenopathy, as well as other localized potential vaccine-related mass manifestations. In addition to a case of minimal change disease, we report two cases here with associated systemic and local pathologic changes related to COVID-19 vaccination. Methods/Case Report In case #1, a 17-year-old male presented with a 2.4 cm left postauricular mass. He had originally noticed the mass six months prior and thought that it had recently been growing. The mass was soft, nonfluctuant, and nontender to palpation. Given the risk of malignancy, a resection was performed. Histology showed an enlarged lymph node composed of mixed inflammatory cell components consistent with lymphoid hyperplasia and no evidence of malignancy. On further chart review, the patient had received his second COVID-19 vaccination just prior to noticing the mass enlarging. A SARS-CoV-2 Anti-Spike IgG assay was as high as 24,396 AU/ml, suggesting that this benign lymphadenopathy was most likely related to his vaccination. For case #2, a 47-year-old male developed a painless right deltoid mass shortly after receiving his vaccination at the same area that subsequently increased in size over seven months to 6.5 cm. Imaging showed a heterogeneous mass within the deltoid muscle concerning for malignancy and a biopsy was performed. Sections showed wavy, bland spindle cells with nuclei staining diffusely positive for beta-catenin, consistent with fibromatosis at his vaccination site. Results (if a Case Study enter NA) NA. Conclusion In summary, these case reports show potential systemic and local reactive effects in response to COVID-19 vaccination.
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Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)has played an important role in the prevention and treatment of novel coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19). Qingfei Paidu decoction, as a general prescription of Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia from the sixth to eighth versions, has been proved effective clinically and is suitable for mild, moderate, severe, and critical patients. It can significantly improve clinical symptoms such as fever, cough, asthma, fatigue, etc. On the basis of the findings of relevant research papers, this paper summarized the TCM understanding of COVID-19, including etiology, pathogenesis, disease location, and treatment, and concluded that the disease is caused by the pestilential Qi, localized in the lungs, and can affect the five organs. It is mainly characterized by coldness, dampness, heat, toxicity, stasis, and deficiency. In response to the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease, the therapeutic principles at all stages are dominated by the elimination of pathogens and removal of toxicity. According to the stages of disease development, the treatment should combine the severity of the disease and the course of the disease with the TCM syndromes. Furthermore, from the clinical application of Qingfei Paidu decoction, this paper discussed the therapeutic intention of "Qingfei(clearing of lungs)" and "Paidu(removal of toxicity)". Qingfei Paidu decoction can clear the pathogenic toxin in the lungs and eliminate external pestilential Qi, which is in line with the therapeutic principles for this pandemic by regulating the triple energizer and protecting healthy Qi using both coldness and warmth to treat both the symptoms and the root cause. Additionally, the experimental research progress on Qingfei Paidu decoction and its modified prescriptions were summarized. As studied, this prescription can inhibit cytokine storm, moderate the overactive immune response, potentiate the immune function and anti-viral ability of the body, and exert its effect on COVID-19 with multiple components, multiple targets, multiple pathways, and multiple biological functions. In conclusion, Qingfei Paidu decoction, as a core prescription for the treatment of COVID-19, can rapidly contain the development of COVID-19, which has been confirmed in terms of TCM theory, clinical efficacy, and experimental research.Copyright © 2022, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Chinese Materia Medica. All rights reserved.
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We present a passive and non-intrusive sensing system for monitoring hand washing activity using structural vibration sensing. Proper hand washing is one of the most effective ways to limit the spread and transmission of disease, and has been especially critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior approaches include direct observation and sensing-based approaches, but are limited in non-clinical settings due to operational restrictions and privacy concerns in sensitive areas such as restrooms. Our work introduces a new sensing modality for hand washing monitoring, which measures hand washing activity-induced vibration responses of sink structures, and uses those responses to monitor the presence and duration of hand washing. Primary research challenges are that vibration responses are similar for different activities, occur on different surfaces/structures, and tend to overlap/coincide. We overcome these challenges by extracting information about signal periodicity for similar activities through cepstrum-based features, leveraging hierarchical learning to differentiate activities on different surfaces, and denoting "primary/secondary"activities based on their relative frequency and importance. We evaluate our approach using real-world hand washing data across four different sink structures/locations, and achieve an average F1-score for hand washing activities of 0.95, which represents an 8.8X and 10.2X reduction in error over two different baseline approaches.Copyright © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.
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Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, power generation and the associated CO2 emissions in major countries have experienced a decline and rebound. Knowledge on how an economic crisis affects the emission dynamics of the power sector would help alleviate the emission rebound in the post-COVID-19 era. In this study, we investigate the mechanism by which the 2008 global financial crisis sways the dynamics of power decarbonization. The method couples the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) and environmentally extended input-output analysis. Results show that, from 2009 to 2011, global power generation increased rapidly at a rate higher than that of GDP, and the related CO2 emissions and the emission intensity of global electricity supply also rebounded;the rapid economic growth in fossil power-dominated countries (e.g., China, the United States, and India) was the main reason for the growth of electricity related CO2 emissions;and the fixed capital formation was identified as the major driver of the rebound in global electricity consumption. Lessons from the 2008 financial crisis can provide insights for achieving a low-carbon recovery after the COVID-19 crisis, and specific measures have been proposed, for example, setting electricity consumption standards for infrastructure construction projects to reduce electricity consumption induced by the fixed capital formation, and attaching energy efficiency labels and carbon footprint labels to metal products (e.g., iron and steel, aluminum, and fabricated metal products), large quantities of which are used for fixed capital formation. © 2023 The Authors
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Sanrentang,originally contained in the Regulations on Febrile Diseases written by WU Ju-tong in the Qing dynasty,was composed of eight traditional Chinese herbs to treat damp-warm diseases. It is a treatment method of gradually clearing away damp heat of tri-jiao,with characteristics of separating dispersion and mobilizing discharge. "Separating dispersion" means dispersion in separated ways,with different ways to eliminate dampness to export the dampness,heat,evil and turbid out of the body. "Mobilizing discharge" means discharge to stretch and unblock the Qi,to get rid of dampness and evil. It can be seen,Sanrentang,as a desiccating formula,taking "separating dispersion and mobilizing discharge" as the cubic basis,has a significant effect on both internal and external dampness associated with pathogenic heat syndrome,and its clinical application is quite extensive. After consulting the data of the past 10 years,the authors gave a brief overview on the syndrome theory,clinical application and pharmacological effects of Sanrentang, and elaborated the therapeutic effect and pharmacological effect of Sanrentang in the clinical application of upper,middle and lower Tri-jiao respectively,providing theoretical reference for effective development and utilization of Sanrentang. Coronavirus disease-2019(COVID-19)swept the world in early 2020 and it is a great challenge for the medical community to seek for effective prevention and treatment methods. For COVID-19,although the cause of the disease belongs to the Qi of "pestilence",many doctors have different opinions on the pathogenic characteristics. However,they all agree with the clinical characteristics of "dampness". COVID-19,which has the attribute of "dampness evil",is so sticky that it can't be cured at once. In addition to the main symptoms such as fever and cough,it is also characterized by the middle-jiao dampness symptoms such as poor appetite,fullness of abdomen,loose stool and diarrhea. It is worthy to further explore the application prospect of Sanrentang in COVID-19 prevention and treatment.Copyright © 2021, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Chinese Materia Medica. All rights reserved.
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We study how robotization, namely the "machine substitution” policy, impacts firms' labour demand in the post pandemic era. Using a unique firm-level data set of online job postings in Dongguan, known as "The World Factory” in China, we find that "machine substitution” policy fosters the funded firms to expand their labour demand. The expansion is mainly driven by the growing demand for manufacturing workers, which offsets the reduced demand for service workers. Also, the expansion can be attributed to an increase in the number of employees listed in job postings rather than an increase in position types. Further analysis suggests that this positive impact is mainly attributable to the productivity effect rather than the restatement effect. Furthermore, there is no evidence of heterogeneity by sector or firm size but the effect of the policy varies by regional epidemic severity. Our results not only reveal the labour demand in the Covid-19 but also provide prominent implications for occupational security and steady economic growth. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.
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Wearing masks can effectively inhibit the spread and damage of COVID-19. A device-edge-cloud collaborative recognition architecture is designed in this paper, and our proposed device-edge-cloud collaborative recognition acceleration method can make full use of the geographically widespread computing resources of devices, edge servers, and cloud clusters. First, we establish a hierarchical collaborative occluded face recognition model, including a lightweight occluded face detection module and a feature-enhanced elastic margin face recognition module, to achieve the accurate localization and precise recognition of occluded faces. Second, considering the responsiveness of occluded face detection services, a context-aware acceleration method is devised for collaborative occluded face recognition to minimize the service delay. Experimental results show that compared with state-of-the-art recognition models, the proposed acceleration method leveraging device-edge-cloud collaborations can effectively reduce the recognition delay by 16%while retaining the equivalent recognition accuracy. IEEE
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In recent years, the outbreak of COVID-19 has brought a new round of challenges to global health care, and daily large-scale testing has also increased the consumption of medical resources. However, studies have shown that the cough sounds of patients with COVID-19 are significantly different from other Characteristics of respiratory infectious diseases. Therefore, this paper considers the use of the patient's cough as a detection sample to give the preliminary screening results. The research was conducted on the COUGHVID dataset. The experiment is divided into two stages: (1) Preprocessing stage: use Pitch Shift and Time Stretch to perform data enhancement on audio data, and use spec Augment to perform data enhancement on mel spectrogram. (2) Model construction stage: use two layers of DSC and one layer of BILSTM to splicing to obtain a classification model. Finally, the method is compared with the baseline method using only two layers of LSTM. The results show that accuracy has increased by 1.9%, F1 has increased by 1.9%, and AUC has increased by 1.6%. © 2022 IEEE.
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Objective: To investigate the clinical value of outpatient screening in department of general surgery during the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Method(s): The retrospective and descriptive study was conducted. The clinical data of 57 patients who visited surgery clinic and emergency department of Union Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology between February 1st and 26th in 2020 were collected. There were 30 males and 27 females, aged (53+/-16)years, with a range from 17 to 87 years. All the 57 patients were measured score of outpatient screening in department of general surgery. The score >=3 indicated high risk and the score < 3 indicated low risk. Observation indicators: (1) clinical data of patients;(2) score of outpatient screening for COVID-19 of patients. Measurement data with normal distribution were represented as Mean+/-SD, and comparison between groups was analyzed by the t test. Measurement data with skewed distribution were described as M (IQR), and comparison between groups was analyzed by the rank sum test. Count data were described as absolute numbers, and comparison between groups was analyzed using the chi-square test. Result(s): (1) Clinical data of patients: of the 57 patients, there were 12 males and 14 females of the 26 confirmed or suspected cases, versus 18 males and 13 females of the 31 non-infection cases, showing no significant difference between the two groups (chi2=0.805, P>0.05). The 26 confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 had an age of (57+/-16)years, and 31 non-infection cases had an age of (50+/-16) years, with no significant difference between the two groups (t=-1.646, P>0.05). (2) Score of outpatient screening for COVID-19 of patients: the score of outpatient screening for COVID-19 of the 26 confirmed or suspected cases was 3.0(4.0), versus 1.0(1.0) of the 31 non-infection cases, showing a significant difference between the two groups (Z=-3.695, P<0.05). There were 17 and 9 of the 26 confirmed or suspected cases with high risks and low risks, respectively, versus 3 and 28 of the 31 non-infection cases, with a significant difference between the two groups (chi2=19.266, P<0.05). Conclusion(s): During the COVID-19 outbreak, outpatient screening in department of general surgery can effectively screen out high-risk patients.Copyright © 2020 by the Chinese Medical Association.
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Sanrentang,originally contained in the Regulations on Febrile Diseases written by WU Ju-tong in the Qing dynasty,was composed of eight traditional Chinese herbs to treat damp-warm diseases. It is a treatment method of gradually clearing away damp heat of tri-jiao,with characteristics of separating dispersion and mobilizing discharge. "Separating dispersion" means dispersion in separated ways,with different ways to eliminate dampness to export the dampness,heat,evil and turbid out of the body. "Mobilizing discharge" means discharge to stretch and unblock the Qi,to get rid of dampness and evil. It can be seen,Sanrentang,as a desiccating formula,taking "separating dispersion and mobilizing discharge" as the cubic basis,has a significant effect on both internal and external dampness associated with pathogenic heat syndrome,and its clinical application is quite extensive. After consulting the data of the past 10 years,the authors gave a brief overview on the syndrome theory,clinical application and pharmacological effects of Sanrentang, and elaborated the therapeutic effect and pharmacological effect of Sanrentang in the clinical application of upper,middle and lower Tri-jiao respectively,providing theoretical reference for effective development and utilization of Sanrentang. Coronavirus disease-2019(COVID-19)swept the world in early 2020 and it is a great challenge for the medical community to seek for effective prevention and treatment methods. For COVID-19,although the cause of the disease belongs to the Qi of "pestilence",many doctors have different opinions on the pathogenic characteristics. However,they all agree with the clinical characteristics of "dampness". COVID-19,which has the attribute of "dampness evil",is so sticky that it can't be cured at once. In addition to the main symptoms such as fever and cough,it is also characterized by the middle-jiao dampness symptoms such as poor appetite,fullness of abdomen,loose stool and diarrhea. It is worthy to further explore the application prospect of Sanrentang in COVID-19 prevention and treatment.Copyright © 2021, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Chinese Materia Medica. All rights reserved.
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BACKGROUND: Barriers to rapid return of sequencing results can affect the utility of sequence data for infection prevention and control decisions. AIM: To undertake a mixed-methods analysis to identify challenges that sites faced in achieving a rapid turnaround time (TAT) in the COVID-19 Genomics UK Hospital-Onset COVID-19 Infection (COG-UK HOCI) study. METHODS: For the quantitative analysis, timepoints relating to different stages of the sequencing process were extracted from both the COG-UK HOCI study dataset and surveys of study sites. Qualitative data relating to the barriers and facilitators to achieving rapid TATs were included from thematic analysis. FINDINGS: The overall TAT, from sample collection to receipt of sequence report by infection control teams, varied between sites (median 5.1 days, range 3.0-29.0 days). Most variation was seen between reporting of a positive COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) result to sequence report generation (median 4.0 days, range 2.3-27.0 days). On deeper analysis, most of this variability was accounted for by differences in the delay between the COVID-19 PCR result and arrival of the sample at the sequencing laboratory (median 20.8 h, range 16.0-88.7 h). Qualitative analyses suggest that closer proximity of sequencing laboratories to diagnostic laboratories, increased staff flexibility and regular transport times facilitated a shorter TAT. CONCLUSION: Integration of pathogen sequencing into diagnostic laboratories may help to improve sequencing TAT to allow sequence data to be of tangible value to infection control practice. Adding a quality control step upstream to increase capacity further down the workflow may also optimize TAT if lower quality samples are removed at an earlier stage.
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Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotides that can selectively bind to a specific target. They are generally obtained by SELEX, but the procedure is challenging and time-consuming. Moreover, the identified aptamers tend to be insufficient in stability, specificity, and affinity. Thus, only a handful of aptamers have entered the practical use stage. Recently, computational approaches have demonstrated a significant capacity to assist in the discovery of high-performance aptamers. This review discusses the advances achieved in several aspects of computational tools in this field, as well as the new progress in machine learning and deep learning, which are used in aptamer identification and optimization. To illustrate these computationally aided processes, aptamer selections against SARS-CoV-2 are discussed in detail as a case study. We hope that this review will aid and motivate researchers to develop and utilize more computational techniques to discover ideal aptamers effectively. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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OBJECTIVE: Transplant recipients have a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection owing to the use of immunosuppressive drugs like tacrolimus (FK506). FK506 and nirmatrelvir (NMV) (an anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug) are metabolized by cytochrome P450 3A4 and may have potential drug-drug interactions. It is important to determine the effect of NMV on FK506 concentrations. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Following protein precipitation from blood, FK506 and its internal standard (FK506-13C,2d4) were detected by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). Total 22 blood samples (valley concentrations) from two coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients were collected and analyzed for FK506 concentrations. RESULTS: Blood levels of FK506 (0.5-100 ng/mL) showed good linearity. The UHPLC-MS/MS method was validated with intra- and inter-batch accuracies of 104.55-107.85%, and 99.52-108.01%, respectively, and precisions of < 15%. Mean blood FK506 concentration was 12.01 ng/mL (range, 3.15-33.1 ng/mL). Five-day co-administration with NMV increased the FK506 concentrations from 3.15 ng/mL to 33.1 ng/mL, returning to 3.36 ng/mL after a 9-day-washout. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a simple quantification method for therapeutic drug monitoring of FK506 in patients with COVID-19 using UHPLC-MS/MS with protein precipitation. We found that NMV increased FK506 blood concentration 10-fold. Therefore, it is necessary to re-consider co-administration of FK506 with NMV.
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COVID-19 , Tacrolimus , Humans , Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid/methods , Tandem Mass Spectrometry/methods , SARS-CoV-2 , Lactams , Leucine , Reproducibility of Results , Drug MonitoringABSTRACT
The uncertain infection transmission causes challenges in accurate disease prediction. Numerous methods have been proposed to capture the temporal pictures from past observations within equal time intervals, which are called single-grained time series. However, these methods are not suitable for capturing uncertain temporal dynamics from infectious disease time series, since the infectious diseases may propagate in the incubation period. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Dual-Grained Directional Representation (DGDR) to generate predictions, via consolidating the representations of an equal-grained time series and several fine-grained time series. Firstly, the proposed DGDR learns a transformed segmentation into three kinds of representations. And then those representations from both equal-grained data and fine-grained data are temporally consolidated to connect with outputs. Extensive experiments on two real infectious disease datasets are done to validate the proposed DGDR. Compared with the other twelve methods, MAE value is decreased by 31.5%, RMSE value is decreased by 29.9%, and R-2 value is improved by 87.6%. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Objective: To analyze the clinical characteristics of the neonates infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the Omicron outbreak in Shanghai 2022. Methods: In this retrospective case series study, all the 16 neonates with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection who were admitted to the neonatal unit in Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center from March 1st to May 31st, 2022 were enrolled. Their epidemiological history, clinical manifestations, nucleic acid cycle threshold (Ct) value and outcomes were analyzed. Based on maternal vaccination, they were divided into vaccinated group and unvaccinated group. Rank sum test and Chi-square test were used for the comparison between the groups. Results: Among the 16 neonates, 10 were male, and 6 were female. All the infants were full-term. The infection was confirmed at the age of 12.5 (8.0, 20.5) days. All the neonates had a history of exposure to infected family members, and thus horizontal transmission was the primary mode. Four infants were asymptomatic, 12 were symptomatic, and there were no severe or critical cases. The most common clinical manifestation was fever (11 cases), with the highest temperature of 38.1 (37.9, 38.3) â and a course of 1-5 days. Other clinical manifestations included nasal obstruction (3 cases), runny nose (2 cases), cough (2 cases), poor feeding (2 cases), vomiting (1 case), and mild tachypnea (1 case). The complete blood counts of all neonates were within the normal range, and the C-reactive protein increased slightly in 1 infant. Chest imaging was performed in 2 infants, showing mild focal exudative changes. Nucleic acid turned negative (Ct value ≥35) within 7-15 days after diagnosis. All neonates fully recovered after supportive treatment, and the length of hospitalization was 13 (10, 14) days. In the telephone follow-up 2 weeks after discharge for all 16 cases, no infant showed reoccurrence of clinical manifestations or nucleic acid reactivation. Maternal vaccination was not significantly correlated with symptomatic infection or the persistence of positive nucleic acid result in neonates (all P>0.05). Conclusions: Horizontal transmission is the primary mode for neonatal SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection. Neonatal infections are usually mild or asymptomatic, with good short-term outcomes. And their clinical manifestations and laboratory examinations are nonspecific.