Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome Differentiation of Delta and Omicron Variants of SARS-CoV-2 Carriers in Changsha,Hunan.

Objective: To summarize and compare the main traditional Chinese medicineTCMsyndromes of Delta and Omicron variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2SARS-CoV-2 carriers to provide references for the syndrome evolution and syndrome differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Method(s):The TCM medical records of imported and local cases of infection with Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 in Changsha since September 23,2021 to March 27,2022 were collected,including 18 Delta variant cases and 36 Omicron variant cases. Their TCM diagnosis information and TCM pathogenesis were analyzed and compared. Result(s): The common manifestations in Delta variant cases were cough,fever,chest distress/shortness of breath,sore muscles,nausea,dry mouth,dry or sore throat,thick and greasy tongue coating,and rapid and slippery pulse. The predominant pathogenesis was dampness-heat in the upper-energizer and heat stagnation in the lesser Yang combined with dampness. The occurrence of chest distress/shortness of breath,greasy tongue coating,slippery pulse,and the proportion of dampness-heat in the upper-energizer syndrome were higher in Delta variant cases than in Omicron variant cases P<0.05. The common manifestations in Omicron variant cases were itchy and sore throat,nasal congestion,running nose,fever,mild aversion to cold,dry mouth,dizziness,slightly reddish tongue with thin white coating,and rapid or wiry pulse. The predominant pathogenesis was wind-dryness invading defensive exterior,and heat stagnation in the lesser Yang. The occurrence of white-coated tongue and the proportion of wind-dryness invading defensive exterior syndrome were higher in Omicron variant cases than in Delta variant casesP<0.05. Conclusion(s): There are certain differences in TCM syndromes and the corresponding pathogenesis between Delta variant and Omicron variant cases in Changsha,Hunan. The Delta variant of SARS-COV-2 tends to induce dampness-heat syndrome, whereas Omicron variant infection tends to elicit wind-dampness syndrome,which is expected to provide a reference for the pathogenesis evolution of SARS-COV-2 infection.Copyright © 2022, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Chinese Materia Medica. All rights reserved.

Could platelet mass index (PMI) be a new prognostic biomarker for COVID-19?

Aim: Although most patients with COVID-19 experience respiratory tract infections, severe reactions to the virus may cause coagulation abnormalities that mimic other systemic coagulopathies associated with severe infections, such as disseminated intravascular coagulation and thrombotic microangiopathy. Fluctuations in platelet markers, which are an indicator of the acute phase response for COVID-19, are of clinical importance. The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between disease severity and Platelet Mass Index (MPI) parameters in COVID-19 patients. Material(s) and Method(s): This retrospective observational study was conducted with patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in a tertiary hospital. The study was continued with the remaining 280 patients. All laboratory data were scanned retrospectively from patient files and hospital information system. Result(s): A very high positive correlation was found between PMI and PLT. The PMI value in women was significantly higher than in men. It was observed that PMI did not differ significantly in terms of mortality, intubation, CPAP and comorbidity. PMI vs. Pneumonia Ct Severity Score, biochemistry parameters (AST, CRP), hemogram parameters (WBC, HGB, HCT, MCV, LYM, MPV EO) and coagulation factors (aPTT and FIB) at various levels of positive/negative, weak and strong, and significant relationship was found. There was no significant relationship between hormone and D-dimer when compared with PMI. Discussion(s): Although platelet count alone does not provide information about the prognosis of the disease, PMI may guide the clinician as an indicator of lung damage in seriously ill patients.Copyright © 2022, Derman Medical Publishing. All rights reserved.

Echocardiographic features of COVID-19 patients without significant baseline cardiovascular disease.

Objective. To assess the relationship between the severity of COVID-19 in patients without significant baseline cardiovascular pathology and various echocardiographic parameters of myocardial dysfunction. Material and methods. 46 patients with COVID-19 were included in our study: 33 patients of moderate severity and 13 - with severe disease. On days 1 and 9 upon admission, all patients underwent an echocardiographic study with standard assessment of the both ventricles function, as well as an assessment of their global longitudinal strain (GLS). Comparison of the studied parameters was carried out both between groups of patients and within each group in dynamics. Results. On day 1patients in the severe group had higher values of the systolic gradient on the tricuspid valve (22.0 [21.0;26.0] vs 30.0 [24.0;34.5] mm Hg, p = 0.02), systolic excursion of the plane of the tricuspid ring (2.3 [2.1;2.4] vs 2.0 [1.9;2.2] mm, p = 0.016), E/e' ratio (9.5 [7.7;8.9] vs 7.5 [6.8;9.3], p = 0.03). At day 9 among patients in the severe group, there was a decrease in end-diastolic (111.0 [100.0;120.0] vs 100.0 [89.0;105.0] ml, p = 0.03) and of end-systolic (35.5 [32.0;41, 2] vs 28.0 [25.0;31.8] ml, p < 0.01) volumes of the left ventricle. There was a decrease in GLS of the both ventricles compared to general accepted values. In dynamics, there was an increase in the GLS of the right ventricle in both groups, but it was more pronounced among severe group of patients (day 1 -18.5 [-15.2;-21.1] vs -20.2 [-15.8.1;-21.1] %, p = 0.03). The troponin levels were in the normal range. Conclusion. In COVID-19 patients without significant baseline cardiovascular pathology, there is a transient decrease in longitudinal strain of both ventricles, even in the absence of clinical and laboratory signs of acute myocardial injury.Copyright © Creative Cardiology 2021.

Changes in Kawasaki disease incidence and phenotype during the COVID-19 pandemic

INTRODUCTION. The aetiology of Kawasaki disease (KD) remains unknown. Changes in infectious exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic owing to infection prevention measures may have affected the incidence of KD, supporting the pathogenic role of an infectious trigger. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence, phenotype and outcome of KD before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. METHODS. This was a retrospective cohort study based on patients diagnosed with KD at a Danish paediatric tertiary referral centre from 1 January 2008 to 1 September 2021. RESULTS. A total of 74 patients met the KD criteria of whom ten were observed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. Alof these patients were negative for SARS-CoV-2 DNA and antibodies. A high KD incidence was observed during the first six months of the pandemic, but no patients were diagnosed during the following 12 months. Clinical KD criteria were equally met in both groups. The fraction of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) non-responders was higher in the pandemic group (60%) than in the in the pre-pandemic group (28.3%), although the rate of timely administered IVIG treatment was the same in both groups (>= 80%). Coronary artery dilation was observed in 21.9% in the pre-pandemic group compared with 0% in KD patients diagnosed during the pandemic. CONCLUSION. Changes in KD incidence and phenotype were seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients diagnosed with KD during the pandemic had complete KD, higher liver transaminases and significant IVIG resistance but no coronary artery involvement.Copyright © 2023, Almindelige Danske Laegeforening. All rights reserved.

Is there sufficient genetic variation to breed Elsenburg Merino sheep with shorter tails?

Context. Breech strike compromises wool production and welfare of Merinos. Long tails contribute to the formation of dags, increasing the risk of sheep attracting gravid blowfly females. Tail-docking is popular globally, as it reduces the incidence of dags. Breeding for a reduced tail length is a more socially accepted measure to replace tail-docking as a management strategy, since stronger legislation for animal welfare is expected. Aim. The study used historic data on tail length (TL), birth weight (BW) and bodyweight at docking (DW) to estimate genetic and environmental parameters for these traits in a well known South African resource flock. Methods. Merino lambs born from 2016 to 2021 (except for 2020 due to Covid-19) of the Elsenburg Merino flock were recorded for TL, BW and DW. The flock was separated by divergent selection for and against a number of lambs weaned per ewe mated in a High (H) and a Low (L) line. Fixed effects included birth year, sex, selection line, dam age and birth type. ASReml was used to analyse the fixed effects so as to obtain an operational model, before adding the random direct genetic (h(2)), maternal genetic (m(2)) and maternal permanent environmental (c(2)) effects. Results. H-line lambs were heavier at birth and tail-docking, with longer tails than those of L-line contemporaries (all P < 0.01). The line difference in TL seemed to be size-dependent, as it was eliminated by adding DW as a covariate to the analysis. The same trend was observed for sex, dam age and birth type. TL was thus affected (P < 0.01) only by birth year in the latter analysis. Regressions of TL on age at tail-docking and DW were highly significant (P < 0.01). Single-trait estimates of h(2) were 0.26 for BW, 0.06 for DW, and 0.30 for TL. TL remained heritable at 0.38 in the analysis including DW as a covariate. Including m(2) improved the random- effects model for TL (0.08) and DW (0.20). TL and DW were genetically correlated (rG = 0.47 and rM = 0.70). Conclusions. TL was moderately heritable, with small m(2) and non-significant c(2) effects. It will be possible to directly select for TL. However, selection for shorter tails will reduce size if breeding values are not adjusted for DW as a covariate. Implications. Further studies on the genetic basis of TL as well as its genetic correlations with other traits of economic importance are warranted.

Nanosponges: As a Dynamic Drug Delivery Approach for Targeted Delivery

Recent advancements in nanotechnology have resulted in improved medicine delivery to the target site. Nanosponges are three-dimensional drug delivery systems that are nanoscale in size and created by cross-linking polymers. The introduction of Nanosponges has been a significant step toward overcoming issues such as drug toxicity, low bioavailability, and predictable medication release. Using a new way of nanotechnology, nanosponges, which are porous with small sponges (below one microm) flowing throughout the body, have demonstrated excellent results in delivering drugs. As a result, they reach the target place, attach to the skin's surface, and slowly release the medicine. Nanosponges can be used to encapsulate a wide range of medicines, including both hydrophilic and lipophilic pharmaceuticals. The medication delivery method using nanosponges is one of the most promising fields in pharmacy. It can be used as a biocatalyst carrier for vaccines, antibodies, enzymes, and proteins to be released. The existing study enlightens on the preparation method, evaluation, and prospective application in a medication delivery system and also focuses on patents filed in the field of nanosponges.Copyright © 2023 The Authors.

Molecular Dynamics and Free Energy Landscape Study of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron M-pro Boswellic acid Compounds of Boswellia Serrata Inhibitors

This work sheds light on the effect of boswellic acid compounds (Alpha boswellic acid, Beta boswellic acid, 11-keto beta boswellic acid and 3-Acetyl-11-keto beta boswellic acid) upon inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 M-pro and O-M-pro (Main protease). A good docking score (-8.4 kcal/mol) is found in the case of 3-Acetyl-11-keto beta boswellic acid as compared to the reference and three other boswellic acid compounds. ADMET results suggest that all these compounds are nontoxic and their pharmacokinetic properties are satisfactory. Moreover, a stability analysis with M-pro/O-M-pro through RMSD, RMSF, hydrogen bonds and Rg parameters in MD simulations is made and we found better values than the reference case. Pre and post-MD structures of Ligands-M-pro show a similar binding site whereas a drift can be noted for L-O-M-pro. 3-Acetyl-11-keto beta boswellic acid shows an average of five hydrogen bonds and it remains stable within the binding pocket of M-pro during the simulation period in comparison to other boswellic acids compounds. Various metastable conformations are observed for all compounds in FEL (free energy landscape), however, Acyclovir-M-pro, Alpha boswellic acid-M-pro and Beta boswellic acid-O-M-pro display only one global minimum. The results suggest that these compounds can be used as potential lead molecules for breakthroughs in drug discovery.

Deep learning-based COVID-19 diagnosis using CT scans with laboratory and physiological parameters

The global economy has been dramatically impacted by COVID-19, which has spread to be a pandemic. COVID-19 virus affects the respiratory system, causing difficulty breathing in the patient. It is crucial to identify and treat infections as soon as possible. Traditional diagnostic reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) methods require more time to find the infection. A high infection rate, slow laboratory analysis, and delayed test results caused the widespread and uncontrolled spread of the disease. This study aims to diagnose the COVID-19 epidemic by leveraging a modified convolutional neural network (CNN) to quickly and safely predict the disease's appearance from computed tomography (CT) scan images and a laboratory and physiological parameters dataset. A dataset representing 500 patients was used to train, test, and validate the CNN model with results in detecting COVID-19 having an accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score of 99.33%, 99.09%, 99.52%, and 99.24%, respectively. These experimental results suggest that our strategy performs better than previously published approaches.

An audit of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH) requesting at University Hospitals of North Midlands

Early identification of PNH, a rare life-threatening disease is essential to ensure appropriate management via the UK PNH service. Since testing for PNH is expensive (75.97 per test), we set out to assess the suitability of PNH requests against guidelines with the aim to feedback to colleagues and reduce unnecessary testing. To determine whether PNH requests at UHNM were in line with criteria in British Society for Haematology (BSH) guidelines. All patients over 18 years of age who had PNH testing for the first time and those who had repeat testing for monitoring between 01/04/2019 and 31/03/2020 were included. Patients were selected from electronic records of PNH sample receipt to laboratories. Hospital records were reviewed for clinical details and investigation Results. 82 requests including 79 individual patients were audited. 57% were male and 43% were female. Median age was 56 years. 97.6% of PNH tests were requested by a haematologist whilst only 2.5% requests were done by non-haematology clinicians. 52.4% requests were in keeping with BSH recommendations, whilst 47.6% tests did not meet criteria for testing. All patients tested outside of guideline recommendations were negative. Of the reasonable requests, only 23.3% (10) were positive. Of the PNH positive patients, 8 patients were known to have a PNH clone with aplastic anaemia;one patient had a hypoplastic bone marrow and a known PNH clone whilst only one patient with cytopenia had a new positivity for PNH. The frequency monitoring for aplastic anaemia and a PNH clone was 100% concordant with BSH recommendations. With appropriate testing, only one new patient was identified. Our audit has limitations. We have not been able to assess whether any patients outside of those monitored for PNH in aplastic anaemia have been overlooked for testing. Also, the time period includes the COVID-19 pandemic so our findings may not reflect usual practice. New BSH guidelines for thrombophilia testing were published in 2022 and recommend testing for PNH in patients with thrombosis at unusual sites and abnormal haematological parameters and for patients with arterial thrombosis and abnormal blood parameters. This will likely limit excess tests although the sensitivity and specificity of such an approach has not been formally evaluated. In a finite health system, it is our responsibility to rationalise investigations. The cost of a year's testing was 6229.54 and that of inappropriate testing was 2962.83. As a department, we could, therefore, save 2962.83.

A comprehensive review on technological advances in alternate drug discovery process:Drug repurposing

The traditional de novo drug discovery is time consuming, costly and in some instances the drugs will fail to treat the disease which result in a huge loss to the organization. Drug repurposing is an alternative drug discovery process to overcome the limitations of the De novo drug discovery process. Ithelps for the identification of drugs to the rare diseases as well as in the pandemic situationwithin short span of time in a cost-effective way. The underlying principle of drug repurposing is that most of the drugs identified on a primary purpose have shown to treat other diseases also. One such example is Tocilizumab is primarily used for rheumatoid arthritis and it is repurposed to treat cancer and COVID-19. At present, nearly30% of the FDA approved drugs to treat various diseases are repurposed drugs. The drug repurposing is either drug-centric or disease centric and can be studied by using both experimental and in silico studies. The in silico repurpose drug discovery process is more efficient as it screens thousands of compounds from the diverse libraries within few days by various computational methods like Virtual screening, Docking, MD simulations,Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), etc. with certain limitations.These limitationscan be addressed by effective integration of advanced technologies to identify a novel multi-purpose drug.Copyright © 2023, Association of Biotechnology and Pharmacy. All rights reserved.

Classic Augmentation based Classifier Generative Adversarial Network (CACGAN) for COVID-19 Diagnosis

Computer-aided diagnosis of COVID-19 from lung medical images has received increasing attention in previous clinical practice and research. However, developing such automatic model is usually challenging due to the requirement of a large amount of data and sufficient computer power. With only 317 training images, this paper presents a Classic Augmentation based Classifier Generative Adversarial Network (CACGAN) for data synthetising. In order to take into account, the feature extraction ability and lightness of the model for lung CT images, the CACGAN network is mainly constructed by convolution blocks. During the training process, each iteration will update the discriminator's network parameters twice and the generator's network parameters once. For the evaluation of CACGAN. This paper organized multiple comparison between each pair from CACGAN synthetic data, classic augmented data, and original data. In this paper, 7 classifiers are built, ranging from simple to complex, and are trained for the three sets of data respectively. To control the variable, the three sets of data use the exact same classifier structure and the exact same validation dataset. The result shows the CACGAN successfully learned how to synthesize new lung CT images with specific labels. © 2023 SPIE.

Safety of Pharmacotherapy in COVID-19 Patients: A Literature Review.

The safety of COVID-19 pharmacotherapy is a relevant issue, first of all, because of the current lack of experience with using particular medicinal products and with off-label prescribing. The aim of the study was to analyse information on potential adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and their predictors in etiology- and pathogenesis-oriented COVID-19 therapy. According to literature data, the main clinically significant risk factors for COVID-19 patients to develop an ADR are the duration of their hospital stay, combined use of antivirals, polypharmacy, and their history of drug allergies. The most common adverse reactions to antivirals, to virus-neutralising antibodies, and to human anti-COVID-19 immunoglobulin and convalescent plasma are, respectively, gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary disorders;gastrointestinal disorders, neurological disorders, and allergic reactions;and transfusion reactions (fever, chills, etc.). For pathogenesis-oriented therapy with systemic glucocorticosteroids, the most characteristic ADR is hyperglycaemia. Janus kinase inhibitors and interleukin inhibitors are most often associated with gastrointestinal disorders and hypertransaminasemia;neutropenia is also characteristic of a number of interleukin inhibitors. Haemostatic adverse reactions to anticoagulants depend on the patient's dosing regimen and condition. Drug-drug interactions are a common problem in COVID-19 treatment, with the combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir showing the largest number of significant interactions attributed to their pharmacokinetics. Currently, there is data on the role of pharmacogenetic biomarkers in the safety and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 therapy. Thus, to improve the safety of COVID-19 therapy, an integrated approach is needed that will take into account both the clinical, demographic, and pharmacogenetic predictors of ADRs and the risk of drug-drug interactions.Copyright © 2023 Safety and Risk of Pharmacotherapy. All rights reserved.

Rapid protocols to support COVID-19 clinical diagnosis based on hematological parameters

Purpose: In December 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic began in the world. To reduce mortality, in addiction to mass vaccination, it is necessary to massify and accelerate clinical diagnosis, as well as creating new ways of monitoring patients that can help in the construction of specific treatments for the disease. Objective: In this work, we propose rapid protocols for clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 through the automatic analysis of hematological parameters using evolutionary computing and machine learning. These hematological parameters are obtained from blood tests common in clinical practice. Method: We investigated the best classifier architectures. Then, we applied the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) to select the most relevant attributes: serum glucose, troponin, partial thromboplastin time, ferritin, D-dimer, lactic dehydrogenase, and indirect bilirubin. Then, we assessed again the best classifier architectures, but now using the reduced set of features. Finally, we used decision trees to build four rapid protocols for Covid-19 clinical diagnosis by assessing the impact of each selected feature. The proposed system was used to support clinical diagnosis and assessment of disease severity in patients admitted to intensive and semi-intensive care units as a case study in the city of Paudalho, Brazil. Results: We developed a web system for Covid-19 diagnosis support. Using a 100-tree random forest, we obtained results for accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity superior to 99%. After feature selection, results were similar. The four empirical clinical protocols returned accuracies, sensitivities and specificities superior to 98%. Conclusion: By using a reduced set of hematological parameters common in clinical practice, it was possible to achieve results of accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity comparable to those obtained with RT-PCR. It was also possible to automatically generate clinical decision protocols, allowing relatively accurate clinical diagnosis even without the aid of the web decision support system. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to The Brazilian Society of Biomedical Engineering.

Diagnostic Role of Platelet to Lymphocyte Ratio and Platelet Parameters in COVID-19 Disease

Backgrounds: This study aimed to analyze the applicability of platelet parameters in assessing the severity of COVID-19 disease. Material(s) and Method(s): Patients with RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 in the Pathology department of a tertiary care hospital in south India from June to December 2020 were included in this study. Clinical details and laboratory parameters of these patients were obtained. The difference between the studied variables in two groups was assessed using independent t-test. The optimum cut-off value of platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) to differentiate between the tested groups was estimated using ROC (receiver operator curve) analysis. Finding(s): This study was conducted on 218 COVID-19 patients, of whom 17.9% showed thrombocytopenia at the time of admission. Among the hematological parameters, PLR, absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), platelet distribution width (PDW), D-dimer, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were significantly different between the ICU (intensive care unit) and non-ICU groups. Increased PLR values were associated with the disease severity. Conclusion(s): PLR could be used as an additional biomarker in assessing the severity of COVID-19 disease, and a cut-off value of 210.27 is optimal to differentiate severe COVID-19 disease from its mild and moderate forms with 79% specificity.Copyright © 2023, TMU Press.

Modeling the influence of the information domain on countermeasure effectiveness in case of COVID-19

A common way to model an epidemic — restricted to contagion aspects only — is a modification of the Kermack-McKendrick SIR Epidemic model (SIR model) with differential equations. (Mis-)Information about epidemics may influence the behavior of the people and thus the course of epidemics as well. We have thus coupled an extended SIR model of the COVID-19 pandemic with a compartment model of the (mis-)information-based attitude of the population towards epidemic countermeasures. The resulting combined model is checked concerning basic plausibility properties like positivity and boundedness. It is calibrated using COVID-19 data from RKI and attitude data provided by the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) study. The values of parameters without corresponding observation data have been determined using an L2-fit under mild additional assumptions. The predictions of the calibrated model are essentially in accordance with observations. An uncertainty analysis of the model shows, that our results are in principle stable under measurement errors. We also assessed the scale, at which specific parameters can influence the evolution of epidemics. Another result of the paper is that in a multi-domain epidemic model, the notion of controlled reproduction number has to be redefined when being used as an indicator of the future evolution of epidemics.

Coagulation Parameters Changes Associated with Covid-19 Vaccination

A global spreading corona virus at 2019 (COVID-19) declared as emergent worldwide, due to its quick spreading and high rates of mortality that serious disruptions. The objective of this research is to explore further into effect of different types of covid-19 vaccinations (Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm) on some coagulation parameters from random samples of students in college of pharmacy/ university of Ker-bala. A case-control study was carried out with Iraqis living in Kerbala city particularly college students in Kerbala University/ College of Pharmacy from 2021/1/16 to 2022/4/16. This study was done to encompass quantitative and qualitative analysis of covid 19 vaccination types and possible thrombosis that occur after vaccination. The enrolled sixty participants of male and female were aged 18years and above. A questionnaire was made questions pertaining age were inquired to make sure participants fulfilled the criteria for in-clusion, past medical history, previous infection with covid 19 were incorporated into the survey. The scien-tific and ethical committee provided their ethical approval in college of pharmacy at University of Kerbala. Our results in this study indicate significant differences in coagulation parameters readings of (Pt, Ptt) between vaccination groups and control by using ANOVA statistical analysis of SPSS. Our study showed that the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups was considerable (Pfizer, AstraZeneca & Sinopharm Covid 19 vaccines) and control group in thrombotic measurements time and platelet mean value. The most effective and economical method of preventing COVID-19 infection is still vaccination. A number of COVID-19 vaccines have been developed quickly, but more research needs to be done on any side effects that may appear.Copyright © 2023, Colegio de Farmaceuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. All rights reserved.

Remote Laboratory Experiments: Fan Map Generation and Airfoil Flow Characterization

This paper presents the procedure followed to conduct two various experiments as part of the ‘Mechanical Laboratory' course of the Mechanical Engineering department, at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, during the Covid-19 period. Adapting to the personal contact restrictions imposed by the health issue outbreak, a remote experimental method is proposed. In the first experiment, the students had to generate the operational map of a cooling computer fan while on the second one the characteristic parameters of a symmetric airfoil needed to be measured. Multifunctional control panel interfaces were introduced to the students. Through these applications, the student had the opportunity to run the experiments, assess the raw data, monitor all the necessary flow parameters and acquire the important variables. The students had to post-process the results and submit two reports, one for each experiment. This teaching method provided the students with the experience of real research project and guided them to use modern tools to enhance the quality of their future work. This publication focuses on the address of the challenges, arose during the automation of the experiments. The remote experimental sessions indicated some advantages in learning procedure which was also reflected on the assignment grades. The development of the procedure has been successfully implemented and tested over a couple of years while the quarantine measure have been in place. Furthermore, the experience gained will be used to implement modern communication protocols in the experimental set-ups.

Differential of antiviral activity between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.

Objective To investigated the in vitro antiviral activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate against different variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Prototype, Beta, Delta, Omicron) by changing the sequence of drug and virus introduction. Methods Prophylactic treatment: Vero E6 cells were treated with Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine sulfate (200.00, 150.00, 100.00, 50.00, 16.70, 5.55, 1.85, 0.62, 0.21 micromol.L-1) for 1 h, then the virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was repalced with fresh medium until the end of the experiment. Post-entry treatment: Vero E6 cells were incubated with virus for 2 h, then the virus was removed and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. Full-time treatment: Vero E6 cells were pretreated with the drug for 1 h ahead, then virus was added and incubated for another 2 h. The virus-drug mixture was discarded and the cells were cultured with drug-containing medium until the end of the experiment. After 72 h of culture, the cells were observed to see whether they became round and shed to determine the cytopathic situation, and the semi-maximum effect concentration (EC50) and drug selection index (SI) were calculated. Results Both drugs were less effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2. Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment. EC50 of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was less than chloroquine, SI was greater than chloroquine, antiviral effect of hydroxychloroquine sulfate was better than chloroquine. The antiviral effect of chloroquine (EC50 = 0.904 micromol.L-1) and hydroxychloroquine sulfate (EC50 = 0.143 micromol.L-1) was more significant against Omicron variant than other variants under therapeutic and full-time treatment conditions. Conclusion Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine sulfate showed good antiviral activity under both therapeutic and full-time treatment, and both drugs were significantly more active against the Omicron variant than the other variants.Copyright © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.

Intravenous Thrombolysis for Acute Ischemic Stroke during COVID-19 Pandemic in Srinagarind Hospital

Background: Stroke is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. In COVID-19 pandemic, stroke remains to be a medical emergency. To treat patients with acute ischemic stroke [AIS], early intravenous thrombolysis is highly time sensitive. This research investigated the impact of regionally imposed social and healthcare restrictions of COVID-19 on the time metrics in the management of AIS patients admitted at the stroke unit center in Srinagarind Hospital. Objective(s): Comparison of door to needle time for intravenous thrombolysis for AIS patients before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Material(s) and Method(s): The present study is a retrospective analysis of patients with AIS who received intravenous tissue plasminogen activator [tPA] from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2020 in Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen. The patients admitted before and after the COVID-19 outbreak [January 13, 2020, as officially announced by the World Health Organization] were screened to collect sociodemographic data, medical history information, and symptom onset status from clinical medical records and to compared door-to-needle time (DNT) for intravenous thrombolysis before and after the outbreak. Result(s): A total of 239 patients were included, of which 113 were enrolled before and 126 after the COVID-19 outbreak. According to the findings, DNT is 35.3 minutes before the pandemic and 35.8 minutes after the epidemic. Conclusion(s): COVID-19 has remarkable impacts on the management of AIS. However, DNT for before and after COVID-19 outbreak is nearly identical. It was established that administering intravenous thrombolysis to patients in the emergency room rather than the stroke unit allowed for speedier access. Therefore, a policy which provides quick AIS treatments in COVID-19 situations should be implemented.Copyright © 2023 Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand.