ABSTRACT
Classically, osteopontin (OPN) has been described as a secreted glycophosprotein. Indeed, most data concerning its physiological and pathological roles are mainly related to the secreted OPN (sOPN). However, there are several instances in which intracellular OPN (iOPN) has been described, presenting some specific roles in distinct experimental models, such as in the immune system, cancer cells, and neurological disorders. We herein aimed to highlight and discuss some of these secreted and intracellular roles of OPN and their putative clinical and biological impacts. Moreover, by consolidating data from the OPN protein database, we also analyzed the occurrence of signal peptide (SP) sequences and putative subcellular localization, especially concerning currently known OPN splicing variants (OPN-SV). Comprehending the roles of OPN in its distinct cellular and tissue environments may provide data regarding the additional applications of this protein as biomarkers and targets for therapeutic purposes, besides further describing its pleiotropic roles.
Subject(s)
Osteopontin , RNA Splicing , Osteopontin/genetics , Osteopontin/metabolismABSTRACT
A global pandemic of Coronavirus appeared in December 2019 in Wuhan and spread globally. The objective behind the study was to find out the impact of COVID-19 on mental status and quality of life of physical therapists of Pakistan. This cross-sectional survey was carried out from August 2020 to January 2021. Data was collected online and personally from teaching and practicing physiotherapists working in universities and in departments of rehabilitation sciences of hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. A sample of 110 physiotherapists was selected through non-probability convenience sampling. Standardized questionnaires including Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), World Health Organization-Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) and Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) were used to assess depression, anxiety, stress, fear and quality of life. Out of 110 physiotherapists, 48 were males and 62 were females. Through DASS-21, it was assessed that the prevalence of psychological distress was 40.0%, anxiety was 57.3% and depression was 40%. Scores on all four sub-scales of WHOQOL depicted that COVID-19 also impacted the quality of life of physiotherapists including physical, psychological, social and environmental health related quality of life. Similarly, through IES-R, it was assess that 35.5% physiotherapists were having mild to severe level of fear regarding COVID-19. This study concludes us that COVID-19 has a great impact on mental health and quality of life of physiotherapists during this pandemic. Copyright © Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
ABSTRACT
SpO2, also known as blood oxygen saturation, is a vital physiological indicator in clinical care. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, silent hypoxia has been one of the most serious symptoms. This symptom makes the patient's SpO2 drop to an extremely low level without discomfort and causes medical care delay for many patients. Therefore, regularly checking our SpO2 has become a very important matter. Recent work has been looking for convenient and contact-free ways to measure SpO2 with cameras. However, most previous studies were not robust enough and didn't evaluate their algorithms on the data with a wide SpO2 range. In this paper, we proposed a novel non-contact method to measure SpO2 by using the weighted K-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm. Five features extracted from the RGB traces, POS, and CHROM signals were used in the KNN model. Two datasets using different ways to lower the SpO2 were constructed for evaluating the performance. The first one was collected through the breath-holding experiment, which induces more motion noise and confuses the actual blood oxygen features. The second dataset was collected at Song Syue Lodge, which locates at an elevation of 3150 meters and has lower oxygen concentration in the atmosphere making the SpO2 drop between the range of 80% to 90% without the need of holding breath. The proposed method outperforms the benchmark algorithms on the leave-one-subject-out and cross-dataset validation. © 2022 IEEE.