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<title>05 August, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
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<li><strong>Predicting Long COVID in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative Using Super Learner</strong> -
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<div>
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Post-acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), also known as Long COVID, is a broad grouping of a range of long-term symptoms following acute COVID-19 infection. An understanding of characteristics that are predictive of future PASC is valuable, as this can inform the identification of high-risk individuals and future preventative efforts. However, current knowledge regarding PASC risk factors is limited. Using a sample of 55,257 participants from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, as part of the NIH Long COVID Computational Challenge, we sought to predict individual risk of PASC diagnosis from a curated set of clinically informed covariates. We predicted individual PASC status, given covariate information, using Super Learner (an ensemble machine learning algorithm also known as stacking) to learn the optimal, AUC-maximizing combination of gradient boosting and random forest algorithms. We were able to predict individual PASC diagnoses accurately (AUC 0.947). Temporally, we found that baseline characteristics were most predictive of future PASC diagnosis, compared with characteristics immediately before, during, or after COVID-19 infection. This finding supports the hypothesis that clinicians may be able to accurately assess the risk of PASC in patients prior to acute COVID diagnosis, which could improve early interventions and preventive care. We found that medical utilization, demographics and anthropometry, and respiratory factors were most predictive of PASC diagnosis. This highlights the importance of respiratory characteristics in PASC risk assessment. The methods outlined here provide an open-source, applied example of using Super Learner to predict PASC status using electronic health record data, which can be replicated across a variety of settings.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.27.23293272v1" target="_blank">Predicting Long COVID in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative Using Super Learner</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Exploring Disparities and Novel Insights into Metabo-Nutritional Comorbidities among COVID-19 Patients in Mexico</strong> -
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During the previous years, particularly at the beginning of the COVID- 19 pandemic, the potential role of metabo-nutritional comorbidities in the severity and lethality of SARS-CoV2 infection has been widely dis- cussed, often describing ambiguous outcomes. Here we investigate the prevalence of metabo-nutritional comorbidities among COVID-19 patients in Mexico. Using a retrospective observational study design, data was collected from official databases of COVID-19 patients admitted to pub- lic and private hospitals in Mexico City. Our study found a discordant prevalence of metabo-nutritional comorbidities among COVID-19 patients, particularly obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. Discordance consists in geographic location-dependent over and under-representation phenomena, that is the prevalence of such comorbidities in COVID-19 patients was significantly over or under the reported value for the general population in each location. These findings highlight the importance of screening for metabo-nutritional comorbidities in COVID-19 patients and suggest the need for tailored interventions for this population. The study also provides insights into the complex relationships between COVID-19 and metabo-nutritional comorbidities, which may inform future research and clinical practice.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.31.23293471v1" target="_blank">Exploring Disparities and Novel Insights into Metabo-Nutritional Comorbidities among COVID-19 Patients in Mexico</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Text mining biomedical literature to identify extremely unbalanced data for digital epidemiology and systematic reviews: dataset and methods for a SARS-CoV-2 genomic epidemiology study</strong> -
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<div>
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There are many studies that require researchers to extract specific information from the published literature, such as details about sequence records or about a randomized control trial. While manual extraction is cost efficient for small studies, larger studies such as systematic reviews are much more costly and time-consuming. To avoid exhaustive manual searches and extraction, and their related cost and effort, natural language processing (NLP) methods can be tailored for the more subtle extraction and decision tasks that typically only humans have performed. The need for such studies that use the published literature as a data source became even more evident as the COVID-19 pandemic raged through the world and millions of sequenced samples were deposited in public repositories such as GISAID and GenBank, promising large genomic epidemiology studies, but more often than not lacked many important details that prevented large-scale studies. Thus, granular geographic location or the most basic patient-relevant data such as demographic information, or clinical outcomes were not noted in the sequence record. However, some of these data was indeed published, but in the text, tables, or supplementary material of a corresponding published article. We present here methods to identify relevant journal articles that report having produced and made available in GenBank or GISAID, new SARS-CoV-2 sequences, as those that initially produced and made available the sequences are the most likely articles to include the high-level details about the patients from whom the sequences were obtained. Human annotators validated the approach, creating a gold standard set for training and validation of a machine learning classifier. Identifying these articles is a crucial step to enable future automated informatics pipelines that will apply Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to identify patient characteristics such as co-morbidities, outcomes, age, gender, and race, enriching SARS-CoV-2 sequence databases with actionable information for defining large genomic epidemiology studies. Thus, enriched patient metadata can enable secondary data analysis, at scale, to uncover associations between the viral genome (including variants of concern and their sublineages), transmission risk, and health outcomes. However, for such enrichment to happen, the right papers need to be found and very detailed data needs to be extracted from them. Further, finding the very specific articles needed for inclusion is a task that also facilitates scoping and systematic reviews, greatly reducing the time needed for full-text analysis and extraction.
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</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.29.23293370v1" target="_blank">Text mining biomedical literature to identify extremely unbalanced data for digital epidemiology and systematic reviews: dataset and methods for a SARS-CoV-2 genomic epidemiology study</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Bi-directional associations between mask usage and the associated reasons before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan: A longitudinal study</strong> -
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Objectives: From a public health perspective, it is important to clarify the associations between mask usage and the associated reasons in situations when mask usage is promoted or mitigated. Therefore, I clarified the changes in mask usage and the associated reasons before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan, and analyzed the bi-directional associations between the two. Design: Longitudinal study. Methods: Online surveys were conducted in two waves, between April 18-19, 2023 and June 6-15, 2023, among people aged 20-69 years living in Japan. A total of 291 participants completed both the surveys. The associations between mask usage and beliefs about the reasons for mask usage were analyzed using a cross-lagged panel model. Results: Mask usage decreased slightly, but significantly, from the first to the second wave (P < 0.001, Cohen9s d = -0.23). Of the eight beliefs regarding mask usage, slight but significant decreases were observed in terms of relief and information effects (P = 0.046, Cohen9s d = -0.12; P = 0.018, Cohen9s d = -0.14). There was a significant association between socio-psychological reasons other than infection risk avoidance (such as norm and relief) during the first wave and mask usage during the second wave [standard estimates:0.25 (95% confidence interval (CI):0.06-0.44)]. Contrarily, mask usage during the first wave was significantly associated with the reasons for infection risk avoidance during the second wave [standard estimates:0.13 (0.03-0.24)]. Conclusions: The impact of downgrading the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan on mask usage and the associated reasons were found to be limited. In terms of promoting or mitigating mask usage, the significance of risk communication based on socio-psychological reasons other than infection risk avoidance, such as norms and relief, was highlighted.
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</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.28.23293298v1" target="_blank">Bi-directional associations between mask usage and the associated reasons before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan: A longitudinal study</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Comparing full variation profile analysis with the conventional consensus method in SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny</strong> -
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<div>
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This study proposes a novel approach to studying SARS-CoV-2 virus mutations through sequencing data comparison. Traditional consensus-based methods, which focus on the most common nucleotide at each position, might overlook or obscure the presence of low-frequency variants. Our method, in contrast, retains all sequenced nucleotides at each position, forming a genomic matrix. Utilizing simulated short reads from genomes with specified mutations, we contrasted our genomic matrix approach with the consensus sequence method. Our matrix methodology accurately reflected the known mutations and true compositions, demonstrating its efficacy in understanding the sample variability and their interconnections. Further tests using real data from GISAID and NCBI-SRA confirmed its reliability and robustness. As we see, the genomic matrix approach offers a more accurate representation of the viral genomic diversity, thereby providing superior insights into virus evolution and epidemiology. Future application recommendations are provided based on our observed results.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.03.551784v1" target="_blank">Comparing full variation profile analysis with the conventional consensus method in SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Single-linkage molecular clustering of viral pathogens</strong> -
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<div>
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Introduction: Public health faces the ongoing mission of safeguarding the population's health against various infectious diseases caused by a great number of pathogens. Epidemiology is an essential discipline in this field. With the rise of more advanced technologies, new tools are emerging to enhance the capability to intervene and control an epidemic. Among these approaches, molecular clustering comes forth as a promising option. However, appropriate genetic distance thresholds for defining clusters are poorly explored in contexts outside of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1). Methods: In this work, using the well-used pairwise Tamura-Nei 93 (TN93) distance threshold of 0.015 for HIV-1 as a point of reference for molecular cluster properties of interest, we perform molecular clustering on whole genome sequence datasets from HIV-1, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), Zaire ebolavirus, and Mpox virus, to explore potential pairwise distances thresholds for these other viruses. Results: We found the following pairwise TN93 distance thresholds as potential candidates for use in molecular clustering: 0.00014 (4 mutations) for SARS-CoV-2, 0.00016 (3 mutations) for Ebola, and 0.0000051 (1 mutation) for Mpox. Conclusion: This study provides valuable information for epidemic control strategies, and public health efforts in managing infectious diseases caused by these viruses. The identified pairwise distance thresholds for molecular clustering can serve as a foundation for future research and intervention to combat epidemics effectively.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.03.551813v1" target="_blank">Single-linkage molecular clustering of viral pathogens</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Long COVID manifests with T cell dysregulation, inflammation, and an uncoordinated adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
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<div>
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Long COVID (LC), a type of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), occurs after at least 10% of SARS-CoV-2 infections, yet its etiology remains poorly understood. Here, we used multiple omics assays (CyTOF, RNAseq/scRNAseq, Olink) and serology to deeply characterize both global and SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity from blood of individuals with clear LC and non-LC clinical trajectories, 8 months following infection and prior to receipt of any SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Our analysis focused on deep phenotyping of T cells, which play important roles in immunity against SARS-CoV-2 yet may also contribute to COVID-19 pathogenesis. Our findings demonstrate that individuals with LC exhibit systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation. This is evidenced by global differences in T cell subset distribution in ways that imply ongoing immune responses, as well as by sex-specific perturbations in cytolytic subsets. Individuals with LC harbored increased frequencies of CD4+ T cells poised to migrate to inflamed tissues, and exhausted SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells. They also harbored significantly higher levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, and in contrast to non-LC individuals, exhibited a mis-coordination between their SARS-CoV-2-specific T and B cell responses. RNAseq/scRNAseq and Olink analyses similarly revealed immune dysregulatory mechanisms, along with non-immune associated perturbations, in individuals with LC. Collectively, our data suggest that proper crosstalk between the humoral and cellular arms of adaptive immunity has broken down in LC, and that this, perhaps in the context of persistent virus, leads to the immune dysregulation, inflammation, and clinical symptoms associated with this debilitating condition.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.09.527892v2" target="_blank">Long COVID manifests with T cell dysregulation, inflammation, and an uncoordinated adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Successful immigrants and attitudes toward immigration</strong> -
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<div>
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Can exposure to successful immigrants in the mass media affect perceptions of immigrants and alter attitudes toward immigration? To address this question, I study the case of Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin, the co-developers of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and children of Turkish immigrants in Germany. I first demonstrate that German media favorably highlighted the Turkish roots and migration history of vaccine developers. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting with the announcement of the success of the vaccine, I then posit that the wide broadcasting of the vaccine’s success and its developers’ identity should have positive spillover effects on public attitudes towards immigration. Amongst those who were exposed to this announcement, compared to those who were not, I find a 4 percentage point increase in support of easing immigration opportunities. I suggest that this effect is driven by a change in perceptions of self-awareness on issues relating to immigration and integration. These findings imply that promoting successful immigrants in the media has the potential to diminish prejudice; however, it is crucial to address varying biases toward different immigrant groups.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/gct64/" target="_blank">Successful immigrants and attitudes toward immigration</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Getting culturally appropriate health messages out in a hurry: Developing a communications campaign for COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American community.</strong> -
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<div>
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Background. Developing health communication materials can be time-consuming. During infectious disease outbreaks, health communication materials to limit the spread of the disease are needed promptly, which hampers the ability to get input from the target audience. This paper proposes a strategy to rapidly develop culturally appropriate communication materials with adequate community feedback. Context. Our strategy is illustrated using a communication campaign to encourage COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American enclave in New Orleans. The community has a high vulnerability to COVID-19 infection due to their isolation from mainstream public health information and COVID-19 related stigma and discrimination. Programmatic elements. The project included community-based COVID-19 testing services and communication activities to increase awareness of the testing centers and encourage frequent testing. Our proposed strategy involves two main components: 1) use of a research team with existing trust relationship with the target community and that includes researchers from that community, and 2) use of a cultural broker and community-based gatekeepers. Free PCR tests were offered daily at a community-based health center. Another community-based organization promoted testing and issued referrals. We developed brochures and posters to increase awareness of the testing services. The cultural broker and community-based partners helped identify key message concepts that were salient for the target audience, as well as the objectives and content of the materials, which were then reviewed by the entire team. The entire team provided feedback on mock-ups of the materials and subsequent revisions. Finalized materials were placed at both partner organizations and at strategic locations throughout the community and supplemented with newspaper advertisements and community outreach. Discussion. During infectious disease outbreaks there is a need to rapidly develop new health communication materials. Our proposed strategy strikes a balance between the need to disseminate new materials with minimal delay and the need for community input by using a research team with an established trust relationship with the community, cultural brokers, and community-based gatekeepers. Effective planning for public health emergencies must start long before the crisis occurs. Collaborations between researchers and community leaders should be developed and nurtured, and community representatives should be involved throughout the entire project.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/a9r8d/" target="_blank">Getting culturally appropriate health messages out in a hurry: Developing a communications campaign for COVID-19 testing in a Vietnamese-American community.</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Challenges faced by Madagascar’s protected area network during COVID-19 were very real</strong> -
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<div>
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We appreciate Andrianambinina at al. engaging with our paper “Elevated fires during COVID-19 lockdown and the vulnerability of protected areas” published in Nature Sustainability in May 2022. In their response, Andrianambinina et al. question the extent to which protected area management in Madagascar was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and our interpretation that the patterns we observe in excess fires are a result of this. They also question our use of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) as the source of shape files for Madagascar’s protected areas. We respond to these points in turn.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/a4zf3/" target="_blank">Challenges faced by Madagascar’s protected area network during COVID-19 were very real</a>
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<li><strong>The Lancet peer reviewers and the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
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Introduction: Peer review is paramount to the scholarly article paradigm, helping to ensure the integrity and credibility of research. The Lancet played a crucial role in disseminating key information on the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing early clinical descriptions, risk factors for death, and effectiveness of measures like physical distancing and masks. Notably, The Lancet was the world9s most cited journal for COVID-19 research, emphasising its significant impact on disseminating critical findings during the pandemic. Methods: Geographic data for The Lancet9s peer reviewers in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (pandemic) were analysed at the country level, ranking reviewer countries. A test of proportions compared reviewer numbers between the years. Results: In 2020, China emerged as one of the top ten reviewer countries for the first time, with a significant increase from 1% (25 of 1843) in 2019 to 3% (54 of 1850), p=0.001. Italy also entered the top five reviewer countries, rising from 4% (67) to 5% (90), p=0.065. Reviewers from Africa 43 (2%) and South America 31 (2%) represented their continents in 2020. The top ten reviewer nations for The Lancet in 2020 largely mirrored the top ten countries in global COVID-19 research output. Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic9s acute phase in 2020, The Lancet, the world9s most cited journal for COVID-19 research, featured peer reviewers who were largely representative of global COVID-19 research output. Notably, reviewers from China, the first country affected by COVID-19, increased significantly. However, underrepresentation of some continents persisted. To foster global idea exchange and enhance pandemic preparedness, research capacity worldwide must expand, broadening the reviewer pool; a vital step given uncertainties in future pandemic geographic origin.
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</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.23293558v1" target="_blank">The Lancet peer reviewers and the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>Real-time epidemiological modelling during the COVID-19 emergency in Wales</strong> -
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The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic presented governments, policy makers and health services with an unprecedented challenge of taking real-time decisions that could keep the disease under control with non-pharmaceutical interventions, while at the same time limit as much as possible severe consequences of a very strict lockdown. Mathematical modelling has proved to be a crucial element for informing those decisions. Here we report on the rapid development and application of the Swansea Model, a mathematical model of disease spread in real time, to inform policy decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.23293519v1" target="_blank">Real-time epidemiological modelling during the COVID-19 emergency in Wales</a>
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<li><strong>Post-acute health care costs following SARS-CoV-2 infection: A retrospective cohort study of among 531,182 matched adults</strong> -
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Post-acute health care costs following SARS-CoV-2 infection are not known. Beginning 56 days following SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, we compared person-specific total and component health care costs across their distribution for the following year (test-positive versus test-negative, matched people, January 1, 2020-March 31, 2021). For 531,182 individuals, mean person-specific total health care costs were $513.83 (95% CI $387.37-$638.40) higher for test-positive females and $459.10 (95% CI $304.60-$615.32) higher for test-positive males, or >10% increase in mean per-capita costs, driven by hospitalization, long-term care, and complex continuing care costs. At the 99th percentile of each subgroup, person-specific health care costs were $12,533.00 (95% CI $9,008.50-$16,473.00) higher for test-positive females and $14,604.00 (95% CI $9,565.50-$19,506.50) for test-positive males, driven by hospitalization, specialist (males), and homecare costs (females). Cancer costs were lower. Six-month and 1-year costs differences were similar. These findings can inform planning for post-acute SARS-CoV-2 health care costs.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.23293563v1" target="_blank">Post-acute health care costs following SARS-CoV-2 infection: A retrospective cohort study of among 531,182 matched adults</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Neutralizing antibody responses and cellular responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 omicron subvariant BA.5 after an mRNA severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccine dose in kidney transplant recipients</strong> -
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<div>
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We examined the anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein IgG antibody and neutralizing antibody titers and cellular immunity in 73 uninfected recipients and 17 uninfected healthy controls who received three doses of a coronavirus 2019 mRNA vaccine. Neutralizing antibody titers were evaluated using GFP-carrying recombinant SARS-CoV-2 with spike protein of B.1.1, omicron BA.1, or BA.5. For cellular immunity, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were stimulated with peptides corresponding to spike protein antigens of B.1.1, BA.1, and BA.5; spike-specific CD4/CD8 memory T cells were evaluated using intracellular cytokine staining. The median IgG antibody titers were 7.8 AU/mL in recipients and 143.0 AU/mL in healthy controls (p < 0.0001). Neutralizing antibody titers against all three viral variants were significantly lower in recipients (p < 0.0001). The number of spike-specific CD8 + memory T cells significantly decreased in recipients (p < 0.0001). Twenty recipients and seven healthy controls additionally received a bivalent omicron-containing booster vaccine, and IgG antibody and neutralizing antibody titers increased in both groups; however, the increase was significantly lower in recipients. Recipients did not gain sufficient immunity with a third dose of vaccine, suggesting a need to explore methods other than vaccines.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.551424v1" target="_blank">Neutralizing antibody responses and cellular responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 omicron subvariant BA.5 after an mRNA severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccine dose in kidney transplant recipients</a>
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<li><strong>Genetic architecture and shared mechanisms of common ′neglected′ diseases</strong> -
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The authors have withdrawn this manuscript owing to the paper being rewritten with a stronger focus on COVID-19 upon request from UK Biobank and to comply more clearly with the primary care data usage agreement. An updated version will be re-uploaded as soon as possible. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding authors.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.23.23290408v2" target="_blank">Genetic architecture and shared mechanisms of common ′neglected′ diseases</a>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Novel computational and drug design strategies for inhibition of monkeypox virus and <em>Babesia microti</em>: molecular docking, molecular dynamic simulation and drug design approach by natural compounds</strong> - CONCLUSION: These advanced computational strategies reported that 11 lead compounds, including dieckol and amentoflavone, exhibited high potency, excellent drug-like properties, and no toxicity. These compounds demonstrated strong binding affinities to the target enzymes, especially dieckol, which displayed superior stability during molecular dynamics simulations. The MM/PBSA method confirmed the favorable binding energies of amentoflavone and dieckol. However, further in vitro and in vivo…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Reflections on access to care for heavy menstrual bleeding: Past, present, and in times of the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> - The symptom of heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) affects at least a quarter of reproductive-age menstruators. However, given the variance in diagnosing the underlying causes, barriers, and inequity in access to care for HMB, and therefore reporting of HMB, this figure is likely to be a gross underestimate. HMB can have a detrimental impact on quality of life. From the limited reports available it is estimated that around 50%-80% of people with HMB do not seek care for this debilitating symptom, and…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibition by components of <em>Glycyrrhiza uralensis</em> of 3CLpro and HCoV-OC43 proliferation</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). 3CLpro is a key enzyme in coronavirus proliferation and a treatment target for COVID-19. In vitro and in silico, compounds 1-3 from Glycyrrhiza uralensis had inhibitory activity and binding affinity for 3CLpro. These compounds decreased HCoV-OC43 cytotoxicity in RD cells. Moreover, they inhibited viral growth by reducing the amounts of the necessary proteins (M, N,…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An engineered recombinant protein containing three structural domains in SARS-CoV-2 S2 protein has potential to act as a pan-human coronavirus entry inhibitor or vaccine antigen</strong> - The threat to global health caused by three highly pathogenic human coronaviruses (HCoV), SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, calls for the development of pan-HCoV therapeutics and vaccines. This study reports the design and engineering of a recombinant protein designated HR1LS. It contains 3 linked molecules, each consisting of three structural domains, including a heptad repeat 1 (HR1), a central helix (CH), and a stem helix (SH) region, in the S2 subunit of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein. It was…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Structural-Based Virtual Screening of FDA-Approved Drugs Repository for NSP16 Inhibitors, Essential for SARS-COV-2 Invasion Into Host Cells: Elucidation From MM/PBSA Calculation</strong> - NSP16 is one of the structural proteins of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) necessary for its entrance to the host cells. It exhibits 2’O-methyl-transferase (2’O-MTase) activity of NSP16 using methyl group from S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) by methylating the 5-end of virally encoded mRNAs and shields viral RNA, and also controls its replication as well as infection. In the present study, we used in silico approaches of drug repurposing to target and inhibit the SAM…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Invalidation of geraniin as a potential inhibitor against SARS-CoV-2 main protease</strong> - Recently, geraniin has been identified as a potent antiviral agent targeting SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro). Considering the potential of geraniin in COVID-19 treatment, a stringent validation for its Mpro inhibition is necessary. Herein, we rigorously evaluated the in vitro inhibitory effect of geraniin on Mpro using the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence polarization (FP), and dimerization-dependent red fluorescent protein (ddRFP) assays. Our data indicate that…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Crystal structures of main protease (M<sup>pro</sup>) mutants of SARS-CoV-2 variants bound to PF-07304814</strong> - There is an urgent need to develop effective antiviral drugs to prevent the viral infection caused by constantly circulating SARS-CoV-2 as well as its variants. The main protease (M^(pro)) of SARS-CoV-2 is a salient enzyme that plays a vital role in viral replication and serves as a fascinating therapeutic target. PF-07304814 is a covalent inhibitor targeting SARS-CoV-2 M^(pro) with favorable inhibition potency and drug-like properties, thus making it a promising drug candidate for the treatment…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Direct blue 53, a biological dye, inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection by blocking ACE2 and spike interaction in vitro and in vivo</strong> - COVID-19 is a global health problem caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has led to over 600 million infections and 6 million deaths. Developing novel antiviral drugs is of pivotal importance to slow down the epidemic swiftly. In this study, we identified five azo compounds as effective antiviral drugs to SARS-CoV-2, and mechanism study revealed their targets for impeding viral particles’ ability to bind to host receptors. Direct Blue 53, which displayed the strongest inhibitory impact, inhibited five…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chicoric Acid Presented NLRP3-Mediated Pyroptosis through Mitochondrial Damage by PDPK1 Ubiquitination in an Acute Lung Injury Model</strong> - Chicoric acid (CA), a functional food ingredient, is a caffeic acid derivative that is mainly found in lettuce, pulsatilla, and other natural plants. However, the anti-inflammatory effects of CA in acute lung injury (ALI) remain poorly understood. This study was conducted to investigate potential drug usage of CA for ALI and the underlying molecular mechanisms of inflammation. C57BL/6 mice were given injections of liposaccharide (LPS) to establish the in vivo model. Meanwhile, BMDM cells were…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Therapeutic effects of tea polyphenol-loaded nanoparticles coated with platelet membranes on LPS-induced lung injury</strong> - Patients with ALI (acute lung injury)/ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) are often septic and with poor prognosis, which leads to a high mortality rate of 25-40%. Despite the advances in medicine, there are no effective pharmacological therapies for ALI/ARDS due to the short systemic circulation and poor specificity in the lungs. To address this problem, we prepared TP-loaded nanoparticles (TP-NPs) through the emulsification-and-evaporation method, and then the platelet membrane vesicles…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Combination of Chinese herbal medicine and conventional western medicine for coronavirus disease 2019: a systematic review and meta-analysis</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Potentially, CHM listed in this study, as an adjunctive therapy, combining with CWM is an effective and safe therapy mode for COVID-19. However, more high-quality RCTs are needed to draw more accurate conclusions.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 main protease targeting potent fluorescent inhibitors: Repurposing thioxanthones</strong> - The coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is the major focus of the whole world due to insufficient treatment options. It has spread all around the world and is responsible for the death of numerous human beings. The future consequences for the disease survivors are still unknown. Hence, all contributions to understand the disease and effectively inhibit the effects of the disease have great importance. In this study, different thioxanthone based molecules, which are known to be fluorescent compounds,…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Identification of a small chemical as a lysosomal calcium mobilizer and characterization of its ability to inhibit autophagy and viral infection</strong> - We previously identified GAPDH as one of the cyclic adenosine diphosphoribose (cADPR)’s binding proteins and found that GAPDH participates in cADPR-mediated Ca^(2+) release from ER via ryanodine receptors (RyRs). Here we aimed to chemically synthesize and pharmacologically characterize novel cADPR analogues. Based on the simulated cADPR-GAPDH complex structure, we performed the structure-based drug screening, identified several small chemicals with high docking scores to cADPR’s binding pocket…</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discovery and evaluation of active compounds from Xuanfei Baidu formula against COVID-19 via SARS-CoV-2 M<sup>pro</sup></strong> - CONCLUSION: Acteoside is regarded as a representative active natural compound in XFBD to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2, which provides the antiviral evidence and some insights into the identification of SARS-CoV-2 M^(pro) natural inhibitors.</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Neurological side effects and drug interactions of antiviral compounds against SARS-CoV-2</strong> - CONCLUSION: Neurological side effects and drug interactions must be considered for antiviral compounds against SARS-CoV-2. Further studies are required to better evaluate their efficacy and adverse events in patients with concomitant neurological diseases. Moreover, evidence from real-world studies will complement the current knowledge.</p></li>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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