ABSTRACT
Since the SARS outbreak 18 years ago, a large number of severe acute respiratory syndrome related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoV) have been discovered in their natural reservoir host, bats1-4. Previous studies indicated that some of those bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans5-7. Here we report the identification and characterization of a novel coronavirus (nCoV-2019) which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans, in Wuhan, China. The epidemic, started from December 12th, 2019, has caused 198 laboratory confirmed infections with three fatal cases by January 20th, 2020. Full-length genome sequences were obtained from five patients at the early stage of the outbreak. They are almost identical to each other and share 79.5% sequence identify to SARS-CoV. Furthermore, it was found that nCoV-2019 is 96% identical at the whole genome level to a bat coronavirus. The pairwise protein sequence analysis of seven conserved non-structural proteins show that this virus belongs to the species of SARSr-CoV. The nCoV-2019 virus was then isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of a critically ill patient, which can be neutralized by sera from several patients. Importantly, we have confirmed that this novel CoV uses the same cell entry receptor, ACE2, as SARS-CoV.
ABSTRACT
ObjectiveTo evaluate the diagnostic performance of bone SPECT and CT fusion imaging in bone metastases from pediatric neuroblastoma.MethodsTwenty-four pediatric patients with neuroblastoma were included in this retrospective study.All patients underwent planar imaging and SPECT integrated with CT.Lesion visibility,diagnostic certainty and diagnostic performance were evaluated with KolmogorovSmirnov test andx2 test.ResultsLesion visibility of SPECT alone,SPECT integrated with CT were significantly better than that of planar imaging ( both H =69.000,P ＜ 0.05 ).SPECT and CT fusion imaging,SPECT alone both detected five more bone lesions than planar bone imaging (77 vs 72).The diagnostic accuracy of SPECT imaging (62.34％,48/77 )was significantly higher than that of planar imaging (45.45％,35/77; x2 =4.416,P ＜ 0.05 ).The sensitivity,specificity and accuracy of SPECT and CT fusion imaging for diagnosing malignant bone lesions were significantly higher than those of planar imaging:82.35％ (42/51) vs 53.19％ ( 25/47),88.46％ ( 23/26 ) vs 40.00％ ( 10/25 ),84.42％ ( 65/77 ) vs 45.45％ (35/77 ; x2 =12.571,14.016,25.667,all P ＜ 0.01 ).The diagnostic specificity and accuracy of SPECT and CT fusion imaging were significantly higher than those of SPECT alone ( 53.85％,14/26 ;62.34％,48/77) (x2 =7.589,9.606,both P ＜0.01 ).However,there was no significant difference of sensitivity between the two methods (x2 =2.942,P ＞ 0.05 ).Diagnostic certainty by SPECT and CT fusion imaging was significantly higher than that by SPECT alone ( H =28.000,P ＜ 0.05 ) and by planar imaging (H =21.000,P ＜ 0.05).ConclusionSPECT and CT fusion imaging can detect more bone lesions in patients with pediatric neuroblastoma.It is helpful for diagnosing bone metastases from pediatric neuroblastoma.
