Electric impedance tomography enables portable and non-invasive approach to screen and monitor chronic kidney disease.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an escalating global health concern, and non-invasive means for early CKD detection is eagerly awaited. Here, we explore the potential of using home-based frequency-difference electrical impedance tomography (fdEIT) to evaluate CKD based on bio-conductivity characteristics. We performed bio-conductivity measurement in vivo paired with standard estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) measurements on a N=126 CKD patients by EIT and traditional blood and urine tests, respectively. We developed an EIT processing pipeline that extracts the kidney regions from EIT images. We further developed a regression model and a CKD classification scheme. Our results showed a significant correlation between EIT-features and eGFR, and the classification scheme shows sensitivity and specificity of 76.2% and 74.6% respectively considering stages 1 and 2 CKD versus stages 3, 4 and 5 CKD. These results suggest the feasibility of EIT to be used as a portable, self-administrated and home-based approach for CKD early diagnostic screening and longitudinal monitoring.Clinical Relevance-The results presented here demonstrates a cost-effective, home-based and self-administrative screening process on chronic kidney disease patients, thereby enhancing the quality and area of possible application of telemedicine. By achieving this, the process presented here can relieve the burden of public health system.

The Trans-omics Landscape of COVID-19

System-wide molecular characteristics of COVID-19, especially in those patients without comorbidities, have not been fully investigated. We compared extensive molecular profiles of blood samples from 231 COVID-19 patients, ranging from asymptomatic to critically ill, importantly excluding those with any comorbidities. Amongst the major findings, asymptomatic patients were characterized by highly activated anti-virus interferon, T/natural killer (NK) cell activation, and transcriptional upregulation of inflammatory cytokine mRNAs. However, given very abundant RNA binding proteins (RBPs), these cytokine mRNAs could be effectively destabilized hence preserving normal cytokine levels. In contrast, in critically ill patients, cytokine storm due to RBPs inhibition and tryptophan metabolites accumulation contributed to T/NK cell dysfunction. A machine-learning model was constructed which accurately stratified the COVID-19 severities based on their multi-omics features. Overall, our analysis provides insights into COVID-19 pathogenesis and identifies targets for intervening in treatment.

Initial Study of Human Genetic Contribution to COVID-19 Severity and Susceptibility

The COVID-19 pandemic has accounted for more than five million infections and hundreds of thousand deaths worldwide in the past six months. The patients demonstrate a great diversity in clinical and laboratory manifestations and disease severity. Nonetheless, little is known about the host genetic contribution to the observed inter-individual phenotypic variability. Here, we report the first host genetic study in China by deeply sequencing and analyzing 332 COVID-19 patients categorized by varying levels of severity from the Shenzhen Third Peoples Hospital. Upon a total of 22.2 million genetic variants, we conducted both single-variant and gene-based association tests among five severity groups including asymptomatic, mild, moderate, severe and critical ill patients after the correction of potential confounding factors. The most significant gene locus associated with severity is located in TMEM189-UBE2V1 involved in the IL-1 signaling pathway. The p.Val197Met missense variant that affects the stability of the TMPRSS2 protein displays a decreasing allele frequency among the severe patients compared to the mild and the general population. We also identified that the HLA-A*11:01, B*51:01 and C*14:02 alleles significantly predispose the worst outcome of the patients. This initial study of Chinese patients provides a comprehensive view of the genetic difference among the COVID-19 patient groups and highlighted genes and variants that may help guide targeted efforts in containing the outbreak. Limitations and advantages of the study were also reviewed to guide future international efforts on elucidating the genetic architecture of host-pathogen interaction for COVID-19 and other infectious and complex diseases.

Prediction of the therapeutic response after target-combined chemotherapy treatment for patients with liver metastasis from colorectal cancer using computed tomography texture analysis / 生物医学工程学杂志

This study aims to investigate the value of pre-treatment computed tomography (CT) texture analysis in predicting therapeutic response of liver metastasis from colorectal cancer after combined targeting chemotherapy. A total of 82 patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases who underwent chemotherapy combined with targeted therapy (cetuximab) between March 2011 and October 2017 comprised this retrospective study population. According to the RECIST1.1, the best curative effect evaluation of patients was recorded. Complete response (CR) and partial response (PR) were assigned to the response group, and the stable disease (SD) and progressive disease (PD) were assigned to the non-response group. The CT texture analysis was based on the Omini-Kinetics software, and the three-dimensional (3D) texture analysis was performed on the marked lesion on portal phase. The differences of texture parameters between the response group and the non-response group were compared. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were depicted on the parameters which with statistically difference, to characterize value in predicting the response to target-combined chemotherapy. The differences of Entropy, Energy, Variance, std. Deviation, Quantile95 and sumEntropy between the two groups in pre-treatment lesions were significant ( 0.867, good diagnostic efficiency could be obtained, with sensitivity of 60.5% and specificity of 79.5%, respectively. In conclusion, texture parameters derived from baseline CT images of colorectal cancer liver metastasis have the potential value acting as imaging biomarkers in predicting tumor response to combined target chemotherapy.

Direct saturation-corrected chemical exchange saturation transfer MRI of glioma: Simplified decoupling of amide proton transfer and nuclear overhauser effect contrasts.

PURPOSE: Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI has shown promise in tissue characterization in diseases like stroke and tumor. However, in vivo CEST imaging such as amide proton transfer (APT) MRI is challenging because of concomitant factors such as direct water saturation, macromolecular magnetization transfer, and nuclear overhauser effect (NOE), which lead to a complex contrast in the commonly used asymmetry analysis (MTRasym). Here, we propose a direct saturation-corrected CEST (DISC-CEST) analysis for simplified decoupling and quantification of in vivo CEST effects. METHODS: CEST MRI and relaxation measurements were carried out on a classical 2-pool creatine-gel CEST phantom and normal rat brains (N = 6) and a rat model of glioma (N = 8) at 4.7T. The proposed DISC-CEST quantification was carried out and compared with conventional MTRasym and the original three-offset method. RESULTS: We demonstrated that the DISC-CEST contrast in the phantom had much stronger correlation with MTRasym than the three-offset method, which showed substantial underestimation. In normal rat brains, the DISC-CEST approach revealed significantly stronger APT effect in gray matter and higher NOE effect in white matter. Furthermore, the APT and NOE maps derived from DISC-CEST showed significantly higher APT effect in the tumors than contralateral normal tissue but no apparent difference in NOE. CONCLUSION: The proposed DISC-CEST method, by correction of nonlinear direct water saturation effect, serves as a promising alternative to both the commonly used MTRasym and the simplistic three-offset analyses. It provides simple yet reliable in vivo CEST quantification such as APT and NOE mapping in brain tumor, which is promising for clinical translation. Magn Reson Med 78:2307-2314, 2017. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Study on quality control before application and after maintenance of the infantincubator / 中国医学装备

Objective:To implement quality control in whole life cycle for infant incubator, and ensure it working in safe and efficient situation.Methods:The parameter detection cases of infant incubator was analyzed and researched according to relative standards and requirements of technique for medical equipment.Results:The detection data and frequent failures of clinical cases revealed that there were parameter deviation existing in infant incubators. These deviations should be adjusted in time according to relative standards and requirements of technique for medical equipment.Conclusion:The quality control of whole life cycle for infant incubator is the necessary condition for ensuring medical quality and safety of patients. To pay attention to the quality control before and after application and after maintenance of the infant medical incubator, in order to ensure the medical equipment can achieve to meet the performance requirement of treatment and provide safe and efficient quality service for patients.

Expression and significance of Survivin in esophageal carcinoma / 中国综合临床

Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of Survivin in esophageal car-cinoma.Methods Survivin expression was detected by immunohistochemistry in 61 cases of esophageal squamous carcinoma tissues and 26 tumor-adjacent normal tissues.Results The positive Survivin expression rate was 60.7% (37/61)in tumor tissues.The expression of Survivin was significantly correlated with the tumor grading,infiltration, lymph node metastasis and the survival(P<0.01).Conclusion Survivin may be an important marker for tumor di-agnosis and it is of great important to the active treatment of high-risk patients and to increasing of prognosis values.

Health Risk Assessment of Nonylphenol in Reclaimed Wastewater / 环境与健康杂志

Objective To assess the risk of nonylphenol in reclaimed wastewater used in city to damage the human endocrine system and to present the data for making the related water quality standard. Methods Based on the monitored results of nonylphenol in the reclaimed wastewater from a reclaimed water plant in Beijing and referenced the phenol toxic parameter from integrated risk information system of the Unite State Environmental Protection Agency and the nonylphenol tested toxicity data from related literature, the risk assessment of nonylphenol on human health was conducted using four step health risk assessments when the sewage was reclaimed as a different approach to use. Results The endocrine disruption risk of nonylphenol in reclaimed wastewater on human health was about in a range of 10-8-10-10, which could even be ignored. Conclusion The risk of nonylphenol is acceptable to human health when the reclaimed wastewater were used for municipal, agricultural irrigation, urban lake supplement, then, nonylphenol as a human health risk factor can be ignored when making the standard of nonylphenol in reclaimed water.

Research Progress on Phthalate Esters in Municipal Sewage Sludge / 环境与健康杂志

Some published research reports on phthalate esters (PAEs) in the municipal sewage sludge were reviewed in the present paper, and aimed at the problems in the field, some preventive measures and the related research emphases were put forwarded also.

Differential Vi Haemagglutination Inhibition Test for Typhoid Carriers / 临床检验杂志

This Paper reports the result of the differential Vi HAI test for typhoid carriers inXuzhou.One of 298 normal persons gave a false positive result.The traditional Vi HA I testfor 148 persons in the same group.6 revealed false positive.In 34 typhoid patients,thedifferential HAI test gave a titer of 1:12 to 1:64 in 16 cases(47%)Where as 10 of 239(4.1%)typhoid convalescents had the same titers.