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Background: Infectious bronchitis (IB) is an acute and highly contagious viral disease of poultry affecting chicken of all ages. The causative agent IB virus (IBV) is a Gammacoronavirus within the family Coronaviridae. Viral genetic mutations and recombination events particularly in the spike protein (S1) of IBV constantly give rise to emerging IBV variants. Vaccination is considered as the most reliable approach for IBV control, but current vaccines have been found to be ineffective due to constant emergence of new variant viruses. Objective(s): The objective of our study was to detect IBV genotypes prevalent in Assam, India. Material(s) and Method(s): Oro-pharyngeal swabs and tissue samples from unvaccinated broiler chickens showing respiratory symptoms were tested using RT-PCR targeting the N gene of IBV. The virus was isolated from infected swab/tissue samples in 9 days old specific pathogen free embryonated chicken eggs through allantoic cavity route. Phylogenetic studies were done based on the S1 gene of IBV. Results and Conclusion(s): Clinically, the birds showed gasping and tracheal rales. Necropsy revealed distended ureters. Virus was isolated and identified by curling and dwarfing of the dead embryos and further confirmed by RT-PCR. Positive PCR amplicons were sequenced and phylogenetic analysis clustered the IBV isolate from Assam with genotype I lineage 1 IBV prototype sequence belonging to Beaudette and Mass 41 strains but the isolate exhibited a relatively high degree of sequence divergence with reference strains. Our findings suggest that the IBV isolate might have emerged from recombination with the local circulating virus or vaccine strains. This will have important implications for IB prevention strategies.
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Background: Patients with heart failure (HF) experience challenges in self-care that contribute to poor quality of life and high health care utilization. The COVID-19 pandemic required HF patients, especially living in countries with strict lockdowns and quarantines, to change their lifestyle including health promoting behaviors. Purpose(s): To assess changes in self-care maintenance in patients with HF changed during quarantine compared to before quarantine. We hypothesized that the self-care maintenance behavior physical activity was most effected during quarantine. Method(s): This is a cross-sectional survey study. From the medical chart, patients' disease severity (NYHA-class), ejection fraction and comorbidities were collected. Self-care maintenance was assessed using subscale Self-Care of Heart Failure Index 6.2. The total score ranges from 0-100, where 70 or higher is seen as having good self-care maintenance. With all the questions in the self-care maintenance scale a question was added: Did this change due to the COVID-19 pandemic Patients could answer yes or no. When patients answered yes, they were asked the elaborate. Patients self-reported physical activity, before and during the pandemic, using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (short form). Descriptive analyses were used for self-care maintenance, content analysis was applied for the qualitative data. Paired sample t-test were performed to assess the change in the total physical activity. Result(s): In total, 120 patients with HF were included in this study (mean age was 79+/-13, 39% female, 78% NYHA-class I/II). Patients had a mean self-care maintenance of 32 (+/-6). No participant had good self-care maintenance (score of 70 or higher). Patients were non-adherent to regular physical activity (77%, n=92), keeping weight down (74%, n=89) and weighing themselves (66%, n=79) during quarantine (Figure). Behaviors which changed the most included keeping medical appointments (81%) and regular exercise (82%). Significantly higher levels of physically active was noticed before quarantine (776 Mets-minutes) compared to during quarantine (106 Mets-minutes) (p<0.01). The change in self-care maintenance was explained by change in motivation and self-confidence. Because of the pandemic and the quarantine, patients reported not being able to rely on health care and their usual social support system. Patients tried to create new habits when trying to maintain their self-care. Conclusion(s): Patients with HF reported experiencing low self-care maintenance during quarantine due to not being able to go to medical appointments and decrease in physical activity. Public health policies during crisis events such as a pandemic should strive to provide support in coping with these changes and offer alternative ways of maintaining their self-care maintenance, especially with physical activity. (Figure Presented).
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Background: Heart failure (HF) is a highly disabling health condition that affects around 20 million people in the world. It is assumed that musculoskeletal condition of this population is low, although there are no studies in this regard. In addition, musculoskeletal pain seems to predict reduced levels of physical activity, functional capacity, adverse psychosocial status and quality of life (QoL). Musculoskeletal discomfort could have been aggravated by activity restrictions due to COVID-19, being necessary a gender approach to characterize this population. Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the musculoskeletal condition and QoL of men and women with HF during COVID-19 quarantine. Methods: An observational study in patients with HF was performed. Sociodemographic data, musculoskeletal condition (Musculoskeletal System Assessment Inventory, MSAI, and Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire, CMDQ) and QoL (Cantril Ladder of Life) were collected. Descriptive and inferential analyzes were performed to explore the differences between men and women with HF. Results: A total of 100 participants were included, 58 men and 42 women, with a mean age=71, 20±13, 19 years. From the total number of patients, 58.10% suffered from musculoskeletal discomfort. Regarding MSAI, when compared to men, women suffered higher musculoskeletal pain in general (p = 0.031), higher musculoskeletal pain that increased with exercises (p = 0.020), and musculoskeletal pain in the last month (p = 0.031). Moreover, CMDQ showed differences by sex in the main location of pain (p = 0.006), the intensity of pain (p = 0.019) and the frequency of pain in the main affected area (p = 0.037), being higher in women than in men. Finally, there were no significant differences by sex (p = 0.665) in QoL during COVID-19 quarantine. Conclusion: Based on the results obtained, we conclude that women with HF presentedmore intense and frequentmusculoskeletal pain in different locations than men during COVID-19 quarantine. In contrast, there were no differences in QoL by sex.
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False information in the domain of online health related articles is of great concern, which can be witnessed in the current pandemic situation of Covid-19. It is markedly different from fake news in the political context as health information should be evaluated against the most recent and reliable medical resources such as scholarly repositories. However, one of the challenges with such an approach is the retrieval of the pertinent resources. In this work, we formulate a new unsupervised task of generating queries using keywords extracted from a health-related article which can be further applied to retrieve relevant authoritative and reliable medical content from scholarly repositories to assess the article's veracity. We propose a three-step approach for it and illustrate that our method is able to generate effective queries. We also curate a new dataset to aid the evaluation for this task which will be made available upon request. © 2021 ACM.
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A conjugated system was synthesized from reduced graphene quantum dot (rGQD) and hemin for the selective detection of favipiravir (Fav), an antiviral drug that has come into much attention during the year 2020 for its use as a drug against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The required rGQD was prepared from soot particles using Hummers' method followed by the amino-hydrothermal process. At the first step, its fluorescence was quenched by preparing the conjugate with hemin. Interestingly, the fluorescence intensity gradually increases (turn-on) with increasing concentration of Fav, and develops 9-fold higher fluorescence at 15.6 nM of Fav. The fluorescence enhancement is selective, and the limit of detection (LOD) was calculated to be about 1.96 nM. The fluorescence turn-on is governed by aggregation-induced emission (AIE), which originates from electrostatic interactions between the sensor-analyte systems. A similar fluorescence turn-on was observed for Fav in human blood plasma (BP) as well as in artificial urine (AU), which indicates that the sensor is viable in real-sample analysis. In addition to Fav, its 1:1 cocrystals with theophylline (Theo) and ferulic acid (FRA) also enhance the fluorescence in real samples with an LOD of 3.47 and 12.2 nM, respectively. Therefore, the cocrystals remain intact in biological medium and the sensor interacts with cocrystals too. The detection of Fav and its cocrystals, and the development of cocrystals as alternatives in the pharmaceutical industry, is essential considering the current COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Therefore, the findings of this work will certainly help in developing fluorescence sensors for quantitative determination of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in real samples. © 2021 American Chemical Society.