Impacts of COVID-19 on reproductive health and prenatal genetics

COVID-19 has a dramatic impact on human health, besides respiratory system, reproduction system would be impaired by SARS-CoV-2. For male, the virus has various negative impacts on testes, including overheating and hormone level fluctuation, which have impacts on the spermatogenesis or spermatogonia development. For female, COVID-19 may increase the risk of endocrine and metabolic dysfunction. However, the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the ovaries is not clear, and further researches are needed to clarify it. Nearly 60% of the pregnant women develop symptoms of infection and more attention should be paid to the increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes including preeclampsia, eclampsia, and severe infection. For the newborns of infected pregnant women, vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is still unclear, and further evaluation are required. Meantime, the pregnant women's fear of the potential infection may reduce their access to the prenatal genetic test. In this chapter, we summarize the latest basic and clinical researches on COVID-19 impacts on male, female reproduction, and prenatal genetic test, hoping to provide guidance and advice for people of reproductive age and reproductive healthcare practitioners. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Validation and Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Modis 1 Km Aerosol Product over China during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 1 km aerosol product based on the Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm has great potential in understanding the interaction between human activities and the atmospheric environment. In this paper, the MODIS 1 km aerosol product over China during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was validated against with the ground measured data collected from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). The result shows a good agreement between the two datasets. The spatiotemporal analyses of three selected regions, which are Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Hubei and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on human activities and aerosol loadings.

Comparison of Atmospheric Environment in China during Sars and Covid-19 Pandemics

Satellite remote sensing has advantages in monitoring environmental changes during the global pandemics such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS) and the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this paper, the variations of atmospheric environment during SARS and COVID-19 pandemics were calculated and analyzed based on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Atmosphere Monthly Global Product. Preliminary results show that: (1) aerosol optical depth is most affected by the pandemics, especially the duration and prevention and control measures;(2) the correlations between the variables of aerosol optical depth, cloud fraction, total column ozone and precipitable water vapor were not very strong during the two pandemics.

Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Atmospheric Environment over China: A Satellite Perspective

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has lasted for more than two years, has had a huge impact on human health and the global economy, as well as the ecological environment. In this study, the variations of atmospheric environment over China from 2019 to 2020 were calculated and analyzed based on the measured total columns of ozone (O-3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA's Aura satellite. The study shows the impact of the epidemic prevention and control measures and the resumption of work and production on atmospheric environment, and demonstrates that satellite remote sensing can play an important role in the monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially its impact on atmospheric environment.

Online and Offline Mixed Teaching Reform in the Practical Course of Artificial Intelligence and Application

It is necessary to ensure the quality of students' courses, especially practical courses, which is an important part of higher education, and plays a positive role in promoting and popularizing the improvement of innovation and entrepreneurship in the face of the non suspension of classes and schools under the COVID-19. This paper explores the mode of online and offline combined with ideological and political education mixed teaching reform in the course, in order to explore the educational functions and ideological and political elements of the course from the practical contents and objectives from the practical course of artificial intelligence foundation, explore the implementation methods and teaching concepts of ideological and political education in the course, so that students can better master and understand knowledge comprehensively, improve the results of students' ideological and moral education, and explore the reform mode which satisfy the requirements of talent training. © 2022 IEEE.

Air Pollution Prediction in Mass Rallies With a New Temporally-Weighted Sample-Based Multitask Learner

With the rapid development of industrialization, the environmental pollution issue is becoming increasingly serious, especially the air pollution problem. As the core of the prevention and control of air pollution, air pollution prediction plays a very significant role in human survival and development. Therefore, it is highly essential to develop an accurate air pollution prediction model for mass rallies (e.g., playground and bazaar). Recent studies have suggested that multiple air contaminants, e.g., PM2.5 and PM10, which belong to a kind of aerosol, can carry the Covid-19 virus and spread it rapidly through the atmosphere, and this dramatically increases the risk of Covid-19 infection, particularly in the crowded and enclosed environment. Nevertheless, most existing air pollution prediction methods, which rely on large amounts of historical data for modeling and assume that the crowd flows relatively slow, are difficult to apply well to predict air pollution in mass rallies. To solve the aforementioned problem and better assist the decision-makers in managing environmental risk to human beings, in this article, we come up with a novel air pollution prediction model for mass rallies. More specifically, we first propose a temporally weighting matrix to differentiate the significance of training samples in the time domain. Then, we construct a temporal support vector regressor (TSVR), which puts more emphasis on the adjacent samples by considering the fact that the crowd usually flows promptly and disorderly in mass rallies. Finally, based on the extended TSVR, we develop a multitask TSVR (MTSVR) that simultaneously considers the related tasks. Since different air contaminants are correlated with each other, all the tasks can benefit by sharing information. The results of comparison experiments demonstrate that our presented MTSVR outperforms state-of-the-art single-task learners, multitask learners, and air pollution predictors when applied for air pollution prediction in mass rallies. Particularly, when under the six-task condition, the error values of the prediction of PM2.5, PM10, and O-3 obtained by our proposed method are relatively lower, outperforming the most advanced method tested by 15.2%, 6.1%, and 4.3%, and the precision values of the predicted values outperform the advanced method tested by 28.3%, 25.1%, and 24.8%.

Identification of common functional pathways in patients with lupus and COVID-19 by time-series analysis

Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disorder characterized by abnormal activity of the immune system, producing the autoantibodies directed against nuclear and cytoplasmic antigens1. Infection is known as one of the common trigger factors for SLE. Coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19), a severe acute respiratory syndrome, is now spreading rapidly throughout the world2.Though previous studies have addressed the susceptibility of lupus patients to the virus but how patients with SLE deal with COVID-19 is unclear up until now Objectives: To clarify the common pathogenesis of SLE and COVID-19, and find the appropriate treatment for Lupus and prevent COVID-19. Methods: The transcription profile of SLE (GSE38351) and COVID-19 (GSE161778) were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO). R package was used to find differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between lupus patients and HCs. After background adjustment and other pre-procession, DEGs were extracted from the peripheral blood of patients with COVID-19 at three different disease progression(moderate, severe and remission status). The Short Time-series Expression Miner (STEM) was used to cluster and compare average DEGs with coherent changes. The different expression patterns of time-series genes (TSGs) were also compared among these patients. GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of TSGs and DEGs were performed by Metascape. Results: Compared with HC, patients with SLE expressed 977 DEGs, which were mainly associated with defense response to virus, Epstein-Barr virus infection and response to interferon-γ(INF-γ) (Figure 1a). As for COVID-19 patients, there were 1584 DEGs obtained when compared with those of HCs (P < 0.05) (Figure 1b). Gene landscapes suggested the signatures of COVID-19 patients gradually changed during the disease progression, and gradually converge to HCs signatures. Time-series genes in the three stage of disease had different expression patterns and functions. A total of 959 TSGs in profile 3 showed a stable-stable-decreasing expression trend and significantly associated with INF signaling pathway (Figure 1c,1d). Interestingly, patients with SLE and COVID-19 shared common pathways such as INF-γ related functional pathway. Conclusion: INF-γ is an important common node of SLE and COVID-19. Controlling the production of INF-γ not only has therapeutic effect on SLE patients, but also may prevent COVID-19.

Analysis of Influencing Factors of College Students' Online Cooperative Learning

Affected by the pneumonia epidemic in COVID-19, online learning has become the most important teaching method in universities, primary and secondary schools all over the world, and the corresponding offline cooperation has also turned into online cooperation. In order to explore the influencing factors of college students' online cooperative learning, we chose the method of qualitative research, taking 44 college students from different majors and grades as the research objects, asking them to freely group and carry out online cooperation to complete the task, and then conducting in-depth interviews with all students, interview to coding and the sorting summary. This study discusses online cooperative learning from the subjective perspective of participants, which is convenient for instructional designers to design and develop teaching programs and explore teaching models suitable for online cooperative learning from the perspective of learners. © 2021 ACM.

COVID-19 vaccination strategy for planning pregnancy and assisted reproductive technology treatment: expert recommendations

The pandemic of COVID-19 has accelerated the development and production of the new coronavirus vaccine worldwide. At present, a number of candidate vaccines have been conditional marketing for emergency use and massive vaccination programs are now being undertaken. Although people of all ages are susceptible to novel coronavirus, pregnant women have traditionally been excluded from clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines, limited data are available on their efficacy and safety during pregnancy and there is lack of data on the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines for planning pregnancy couples. This statement reviews and summarizes relevant research and guidelines about COVID-19 vaccination, which has been discussed by the expert group of Beijing Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Center For Quality Control and Improvement, to provide recommendations on COVID-19 vaccination for planning pregnancy couples and those receiving fertility treatment. © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Impacts and prompts of COVID-19 outbreaking on assisted reproductive technology services in Beijing

Objective: To explore the impacts of COVID-19 outbreaking on assisted reproductive technology (ART) services in Beijing, besides the tips of quality control points and treatment plans for future. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate the situation of ART in 12 organizations in Beijing during January 1 to April 30, 2019 and 2020. Results: From January to April of 2020, the total outpatient volume of 12 ART centers in Beijing decreased by 54.4%, compared with the same period of 2019. The clinical pregnancy rates were 11.7%, 20.5%, 38.4% and 45.9% for artificial insemination by husband, artificial insemination by donor semen, fresh embryo transfer and thawed embryo transfer, respectively, which showed no statistical difference from January to April 2019 (11.6%, 23.1%, 40.3%, 46.0%) (P=0.971, P=0.469, P=0.195 and P=0.881). Conclusion: Under the influence of COVID-19, ART services were decreased in Beijing, while the quality remained stable. The quality control could be organized hierarchically for different situations, and extending to choose more efficient treatment programs to control the risk of infection for patients during the "new normal" period of COVID-19. © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Expert consensus on the regular prevention and control measurements of COVID-19 in assisted reproductive technology institutions and human sperm banks

COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be a great challenge to human reproductive health. Although the COVID-19 epidemic has been controlled in China, the strict prevention and control measurements are still warranted and should be normalized at present period. Safely serving the infertile patient emerges to be an important work in this social background. According to the requirements of the public health authorities and the characteristics of assisted reproductive technology (ART), experts from National Committee of Quality Management of ART have developed a consensus on outpatient clinic, hospitalization, operation room, ART laboratory and human sperm bank, in order to provide recommendations on the resumption of services in ART institutions in China. © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Impacts of COVID-19 pandemics on the services of assisted reproductive technology in Chinese mainland: a national cross-sectional survey

Objective: To explore the impacts of COVID-19 pandemics on assisted reproductive technology (ART) services in Chinese mainland, and then to provide evidence-based guidance for the following resumption of ART centers and sperm banks. Methods: In May 2020, an online questionnaire survey was conducted in all 517 ART centers and 27 sperm banks from all 31 provinces in Chinese mainland. The services number of different technologies in 2019 and 2020 (from January to April), the epidemic prevention and control measures have being taken, infectious numbers of medical workers and patients seeking for ART services, and situations about the business suspension and resumption during the epidemic period in these institutions were surveyed. Results: Among all surveyed institutions, there were 475 ART centers (91.9%) and 22 sperm banks (81.5%) that completed the online questionnaire. Totally, 63.6% (302/475) of ART centers and 95.5% (21/22) of sperm banks suspended services due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The comparison between the period from January to April in 2020 and that in 2019 showed that the total number of outpatients, artificial insemination with husband semen (AIH) cycles, artificial inseminaton with donor semen (AID) cycles, aspiration cycles, fresh embryo transfer cycles, and frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles decreased by 45.0%, 46.5%, 52.8%, 49.2%, 52.3% and 37.1% (70%-90% in Hubei Province as the hardest-hit area), and that the total number of sperm donors and those seeking self-sperm preservation decreased by 60.7% and 51.1%. A total of 5 medical staff infected with COVID-19 were reported by ART centers and all cases were in Hubei Province;none of infected cases among medical staff was reported by sperm banks. Conclusion: During the "new normal" period of COVID-19, it is urgent to develop specific COVID-19 prevention and control procedures and screening guidelines for ART centers and sperm banks. It is necessary to establish a dynamic hierarchical evaluation and management system for ART patients, in order to efficiently identify those patients who need fertility treatment services with priority. © 2021 Chinese Medical Association

Emerging questions and challenges of COVID-19 on reproductive health

During the outbreak of COVID-19, this paper aimed to discuss its potential risks on reproductive health, which was underpinned by the virus, drugs, disinfectants and psychological problems. The literatures review on previous and latest studies showed that COVID-19 may have potential effects on both men's and women's reproductive systems;that contraception should be recommended during antiviral treatment and for at least eight months after the end of antiviral treatment, but there is no evidence to support the termination of pregnancy without medical indicators during early pregnancy;and that chlorine disinfectants are not recommended for assisted reproduction laboratories. Medical professionals should make a comprehensive assessment according to the patient's fertility needs, disease status and psychological level, in order to provide reasonable fertility guidance and counselling. © 2020 Chinese Medical Association