The review of COVID-19 and the current progress in intervention and diagnostics

COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan city of Hubei Province of China in December 2019, becoming a pandemic declared by the world health organization. This article is a review of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It typically informs the genome structure of the SARS-CoV-2 and its pathogenic mechanisms, concludes a series of non-pharmaceutical control methods, and focuses on several testing measures. The inventions of the disease treatments remain an important challenge to all medical institutions while a series ofmedications have been brought to the public. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.

Improved VGG-16 Neural Network for Parameter Reduction

With the development of Deep Learning, image recognition technology has been applied in many aspects. And convolutional neural networks have played a key role in realizing image recognition under the increasing computing power and massive data. However, if developers want to implement the training of convolutional neural networks and achieve the subsequent applications in scenarios such as personal computers, IoT devices, and embedded platforms with low Graphics Processing Units(GPUs) memory, a large number of parameters during training of convolutional neural networks is a great challenge. Therefore, this paper uses depthwise separable convolution to optimize the classic convolutional neural network model VGG-16 to solve this problem. And the VGG-16-JS model is proposed using the Inception structure dimensionality reduction and depthwise separable convolution on the VGG-16 convolutional neural network model. Finally, this paper compares the classification success rates of VGG-16 and VGG-16-JS for the application scenario of the COVID-19 mask-wearing. A series of reliable experimental data show that the improved VGG-16-JS model significantly reduces the number of parameters required for model training without a significant drop in the success rate. It solves the GPU memory requirements for training neural networks to a certain extent. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Treatment and comorbidities of patients with erectile dysfunction before and during COVID-19 in the United States: A real-world data analysis

Introduction Erectile dysfunction (ED) is usually a symptom of another medical condition. People with poor overall health are more likely to develop severe form of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may have unwanted symptoms such as ED. COVID-19-related stress, anxiety, and depression can also impact sexual health and possibly lead to ED. There are various treatment options for patients with ED. However, real-world evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on the treatment and comorbidities of patients with ED is limited. Objectives To estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the treatment and comorbidities of patients with ED in the United States. Methods This retrospective real-world data (RWD) analysis used the IQVIA PharMetrics® Plus claims database, which is a patient-Centric, closed claims database of fully adjudicated pharmacy, hospital and medical claims anonymized at the patient level, that captures the complete patient journey for all services billed to and covered by the patient's health plan. We compared the ED treatment and comorbidities in adult males aged 18+ years with ED in the same 3-month periods before (01March - 31May, 2019) and during (01March – 31May, 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. ED treatment included any ED-related claims, prescriptions of any and individual phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor (PDE5i) medications (avanafil, sildenafil, tadalafil and vardenafil). Results See the table below for number of patients having ED-related claims, having any and individual PDE5i prescriptions, number of patients with COVID-19 diagnosis, and percentage of patients with each of the top 10 comorbidities, in the 3-month periods before and during COVID-19. Conclusions RWD showed that ED-related claims significantly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the pandemic's impact on ED patients’ health. However, the use of PDE5i medications remained stable during the pandemic. Key comorbidities including hypertension, hyperlipidemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus, benign prostatic hyperplasia with lower urinary tract symptoms, testicular hypofunction, and malignant neoplasm of the prostate, during the pandemic, compared with pre-pandemic period, highlighted the impact of the pandemic on ED patients’ health and need for managing their other comorbid chronic diseases. Disclosure Work supported by industry: yes, by Viatris. A consultant, employee (part time or full time) or shareholder is among the authors (Viatris).