COVID-19 infections among healthcare workers at a university hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers (HCWs) at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A prospective cross-sectional study of HCWs confirmed to have COVID-19 infection from March 1st, 2020 to December 31st, 2022. RESULTS: A total of 746 HCWs were diagnosed with COVID-19. Patients' age ranged from 22-60 years with a mean ± standard deviation of 37.4 ± 8.7 years. The infection was community-acquired in 584 (78.3%) HCWs. The vast majority (82.6%) of the infected HCWs had no comorbidities. Nurses (400/746 or 53.6 %) represented the largest professional group, followed by physicians (128/746 or 17.2%), administrative staff (125/746 or 16.8%), respiratory therapists (54/746 or 7.2%), and physiotherapists (39/746 or 5.2%). Symptoms included fever (64.1%), cough (55.6%), sore throat (44.6%), headache (22.9%), runny nose (19.6%), shortness of breath (19.0%), fatigue (12.7%), body aches (11.4%), diarrhea (10.9%), vomiting (4.4%), and abdominal pain (2.8%). Most (647 or 86.7%) patients were managed as outpatients. Four (0.5%) HCWs died. CONCLUSIONS: HCWs face a dual risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, both from community exposure and within the hospital setting. Comprehensive infection control strategies are needed to protect HCWs both inside and outside the hospital environment.

A fluorescence chemo sensor approach for determination of finerenone in pharmaceutical formulation and human plasma: Method development and validation.

Finerenone, a non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, has gained recent approval for treating cardiovascular and kidney-related conditions. Herein, an innovative fluorescence chemo sensor was developed for the determination of finerenone in the pharmaceutical dosage form and the plasma matrix. The method is basically based on chemical transformation of finerenone into a fluorescent product through sequential reactions. This transformation occurs through a sequence of steps involving the interaction of finerenone with trimethylamine, resulting in the formation of a nucleophilic intermediate that subsequently reacts with bromoacetyl bromide to form fluorescent product, (S)-N-(2-bromoacetyl)-4-(4-cyano-2-methoxyphenyl)-5-ethoxy-2,8-dimethyl-1,4-dihydro-1,6-naphthyridine-3-carboxamide. The formed fluorescent product exhibits defined emission peak at 338 nm when excited at 248 nm. Significant concentration-dependent fluorescence enhancement was obtained enabling precise finerenone determination in the pharmaceutical formulation and plasma matrix. The method was optimized and validated providing sensitive determination over linearity range of 1-200 ng/mL with a lower limit of detection at 0.280 ng/mL. This strategy provides an efficient, economical substitute and straightforward, more sensitive analytical method for finerenone assessment in various matrices, in contrast to the previously published method, high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, which is expensive and time-consuming.

Derivative spectroscopy and wavelet transform as green spectrophotometric methods for abacavir and lamivudine measurement.

Herein, two different sustainable and green signal processing spectrophotometric approaches, namely, derivative spectroscopy and wavelet transform, have been utilized for effective measurement of the antiretroviral therapy abacavir and lamivudine in their pharmaceutical formulations. These methods were used to enhance the spectral data and differentiate between the absorption bands of abacavir and lamivudine in order to accurately measure their concentrations. For determining abacavir and lamivudine, the first derivative spectrophotometric method has been applied to the zero-order and ratio spectra of both drugs. The same approach has been tested using the continuous wavelet transform method where a second order 2.4 of rbio and bior wavelet families were found to be optimum for measuring both drugs. Validation of the proposed methods affirmed their reliability in terms of linearity over the concentration range 1.5-30 µg/mL and 1.5-36 µg/mL for abacavir and lamivudine, respectively, precision (RSD < 2 %), and accuracy with mean recoveries ranging between 98 % and 102 %. Additionally, these spectrophotometric methodologies were applied to real pharmaceutical preparations and yielded results congruent with a prior chromatographic method. Most prominently, the proposed methods stood out for their greenness and sustainability with 97 points as evaluated by the analytical eco-scale method and a score value of 0.79 as analyzed by AGREE method, thereby making them suitable for resource-limited settings and highlighting the potential for broader application of green analytical methods in pharmaceutical analysis.

Postpartum Screening for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Among Women With Gestational Diabetes Mellitus at King Abdulaziz University Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background Diabetes is characterized by elevated blood glucose levels due to inadequate insulin production or abnormalities in cellular activity. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is one of the most prominent indicators of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which develops in pregnant women whose pancreatic function is insufficient to control the insulin resistance associated with pregnancy. Moreover, it is the most common metabolic disorder, with the majority of cases beginning in the second or third trimester of pregnancy and affecting up to 25% of pregnant women. Objectives The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with postpartum T2DM screening in women with GDM at King Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH) between 2010 and 2022. The secondary objective was to assess the factors associated with providing information to the patients about the risks of increased blood glucose and postpartum lifestyle modification. Methods We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study at KAUH to investigate potential factors associated with postpartum screening for T2DM. Out of 564 patients diagnosed with GDM between 2020 and 2022, we included 200 women aged over 18 years with a history of GDM, as they met the inclusion criteria for our study. Patients younger than 18 years with missing or incomplete baseline characteristics were excluded. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics version 21 (IBM Corp. Released 2012. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.), and p-value <0.05 was considered significant. Results A total of 200 postpartum women with GDM were included in this study. Their mean age was 35.02±5.2 years. Many of them had a family history of diabetes (83.0%) and a previous diagnosis of GDM (60.5%). The patients who performed glucose testing six weeks after birth were previously diagnosed with GDM (37.0%) or with a family history of diabetes (45.5%). The significant variables in this analysis were mothers having frequent postpartum hospital follow-up visits (P<0.001), mothers with gestational weight gain (P=0.018), those who were informed about the risks of increased blood glucose (P=0.011), and those who were informed about plans for postpartum glucose screening (P=0.002). The mothers with a previous history of GDM were the highest to be informed of the risks of elevated blood glucose. Conclusion Frequent postpartum hospital follow-up visits, gestational weight gain, knowledge of the risks of elevated blood sugar, and postpartum glucose screening plans were all associated with postpartum glucose testing rates among women with GDM in Saudi Arabia.

Advances in immunotherapy for glioblastoma multiforme.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive malignant brain tumor of the central nervous system and has a very poor prognosis. The current standard of care for patients with GBM involves surgical resection, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, conventional therapies have not resulted in significant improvements in the survival outcomes of patients with GBM; therefore, the overall mortality rate remains high. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps the immune system to fight cancer and has shown success in different types of aggressive cancers. Recently, healthcare providers have been actively investigating various immunotherapeutic approaches to treat GBM. We reviewed the most promising immunotherapy candidates for glioblastoma that have achieved encouraging results in clinical trials, focusing on immune checkpoint inhibitors, oncolytic viruses, nonreplicating viral vectors, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) immunotherapies.

2D, 3D and 4D active compound delivery in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Recent advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have shown that controlling cells microenvironment during growth is a key element to the development of successful therapeutic system. To achieve such control, researchers have first proposed the use of polymeric scaffolds that were able to support cellular growth and, to a certain extent, favor cell organization and tissue structure. With nowadays availability of a large pool of stem cell lines, such approach has appeared to be rather limited since it does not offer the fine control of the cell micro-environment in space and time (4D). Therefore, researchers are currently focusing their efforts on developing strategies that include active compound delivery systems in order to add a fourth dimension to the design of 3D scaffolds. This review will focus on recent concepts and applications of 2D and 3D techniques that have been used to control the load and release of active compounds used to promote cell differentiation and proliferation in or out of a scaffold. We will first present recent advances in the design of 2D polymeric scaffolds and the different techniques that have been used to deposit molecular cues and cells in a controlled fashion. We will continue presenting the recent advances made in the design of 3D scaffolds based on hydrogels as well as polymeric fibers and we will finish by presenting some of the research avenues that are still to be explored.