Insights into Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Current Understanding, Research, and Therapeutic Updates.

BACKGROUND: Humans can be infected with various coronaviruses that can cause serious illness and death. One such pandemic strain of coronavirus was recently identified in December 2019, and it led to a devastating outbreak in Wuhan city of China. It is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2). It is highly contagious and causes symptoms such as fever, cough, and shortness of breath. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review is to highlight the current understanding, research, and therapeutic updates of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: A thorough literature search was conducted for research papers and patents in the context of COVID-19. All the related articles were extracted from various public repositories such as Google Scholar, Pubmed, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Springer, Web of Science, etc. Results: The present analysis revealed that the key areas of the inventions were vaccines and diagnostic kits apart from developing the treatment of CoV. It was also observed that no specific vaccine treatments were available for the treatment of 2019-nCov; therefore, developing novel chemical or biological drugs and kits for early diagnosis, prevention, and disease management is the primary governing topic among the patented inventions. The present study also indicates potential research opportunities for the future, particularly to combat 2019-nCoV. The current focus of the researches has turned towards developing four potential treatments, including the development of candidate vaccines, development of novel potential drugs, repurposing of existing drugs, and development of convalescent plasma therapy. The PCR based diagnosis is the gold standard for the COVID-19 testing, but it requires resource time, expertise, and high associated cost; hence researchers are also developing different diagnostic methods for the COVID-19. Although vaccines are being developed by various companies and have passed the pre-clinical stages but there still exists no guarantee for these to come into effect. The current treatments that are being used for COVID-19 patients are not well established and have shown limited success. CONCLUSION: The pandemic has challenged the medical, economic, and public health infrastructure across the globe. There is an urgent need to explore all available and possible methods/ approaches to study this disease for drug and vaccine development at the earliest.

The Role of Advanced Technologies Supplemented with Traditional Methods in Pharmacovigilance Sciences.

BACKGROUND: The immediate automatic systemic monitoring and reporting of adverse drug reactions, improving the efficacy is the utmost need of the medical informatics community. The venturing of advanced digital technologies into the health sector has opened new avenues for rapid monitoring. In recent years, data shared through social media, mobile apps, and other social websites has increased manifolds requiring data mining techniques. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this report is to highlight the role of advanced technologies together with the traditional methods to proactively aid in the early detection of adverse drug reactions concerned with drug safety and pharmacovigilance. METHODS: A thorough search was conducted on papers and patents regarding pharmacovigilance. All articles with respect to the relevant subject were explored and mined from public repositories such as Pubmed, Google Scholar, Springer, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Web of Science, etc. Results: The European Union's Innovative Medicines Initiative WEB-RADR project has emphasized the development of mobile applications and social media data for reporting adverse effects. Only relevant data has to be captured through the data mining algorithms (DMAs) as it plays an important role in timely prediction of risk with high accuracy using two popular approaches; the frequentist and Bayesian approach. Pharmacovigilance at the pre-marketing stage is useful for the prediction of adverse drug reactions in the early developmental stage of a drug. Later, post-marketing safety reports and clinical data reports are important to be monitored through electronic health records, prescription-event monitoring, spontaneous reporting databases, etc. Conclusion: The advanced technologies supplemented with traditional technologies are the need of the hour for evaluating a product's risk profile and reducing risk in population especially with comorbid conditions and on concomitant medications.

Surreptitious TB Infections with Recently Identified DM People: A Cross- Sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) among Diabetes Mellitus (DM) population is more expected to fail treatment of TB due to smear-negative TB. OBJECTIVE: We sought to compare and evaluate different methods to study the frequency of TB infections among DM patients. METHODS: Blood, sputum and urine samples were collected from 500 newly identified diabetic patients from different diabetic clinics in Warangal districts. Smear microscopy, Culture and Line Probe Assay by Polymerase Chain Reaction (LPA PCR) were used for identification of tuberculosis. RESULTS: Based on the chest X-Ray of 200 diabetic patients, suspected with pulmonary infections, 113 were males, 85 were females and 2 were children. All 200 patients were tested for tuberculosis infections, 55 were confirmed based on chest X-ray lesions. Off 55 patients, 30 were positive and 25 were negative for AFB microscopy, but were shown positive for chest X-ray. 22 were reported to be culture positive on solid media and identified as Mycobacterium tuberculosis based on morphology and biochemical methods. 36 samples were identified to be positive for LED, FM microscopy and LPA. Off 36 positive samples, 2 were MDR-TB and 34 were MTB based on LPA PCR method. Off 25 smear negative samples, 2 were identified as culture positive and confirmed to be MTB by morphological, biochemical tests. CONCLUSION: Smear Negative Microscopy plays a vital role in the spread of tuberculosis infection among diabetic patients. Along with the smear microscopy, there is a need to rely on other methods for rapid identification and diagnosis of tuberculosis among the diabetic patients to control the spread of infection in the community and household contacts.