To assess if SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) systemic disease can be determined by available nucleoprotein assays, we compared the performance of three commercial SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein (N) assays in plasma. ...A total of 272 plasma samples collected in the period November-December 2021 were analyzed by the methods Simoa SARS CoV-2 N Protein Advantage Kit Quanterix Simoa, Solsten SARS-CoV-2 Antigen enzyme immunosorbent assay (ELISA) Solsten ELISA, and Elecsys SARS-CoV-2 Antigen electrochemiluminescence immunoassay Elecsys ECLIA. Additionally, a dilution series of inactivated virus culture was analyzed by the three assays. The SARS CoV-2 PCR-status was not known for the patients. Linear correlation in the pairwise correlation between assays as well as linearity of dilution series of inactivated virus culture was estimated by Spearman score. Sensitivity and specificity were estimated by pairwise comparison. The three assays showed poor agreement on patient samples with regards to concentration. Performance on virus culture was excellent but with different level of detection (LOD). Positive vs negative results show comparable sensitivity and specificity of Quanterix Simoa and Solsten ELISA, with a higher LOD in Elecsys ECLIA and thus lower sensitivity and high specificity. N by all tested assays can be used as a marker for systemic COVID-19 disease.
•A novel antithrombotic formulation blood collection tube allows simultaneous analysis of thirty-two blood analytes.•The hematological, biochemical and d-dimer measurands can be measured in a single ...blood collection tube.•A new formulation has a potential to allow measurements of glucose and homocysteine due to stabilized blood cell metabolism.
The objective of our study was to evaluate a single blood collection tube with a novel antithrombotic formulation to measure both hematological, biochemical, and d-dimer analytes.
Paired samples of gold standard blood tubes (EDTA, lithium heparin, sodium citrate) and a new antithrombotic formulation blood tube were collected from 187 patients. The new antithrombotic tube is a lithium heparin tube preloaded with a liquid form of prostacyclin analog. The novel tube was tested on seventeen hematological parameters and smears against EDTA, on fourteen biochemical parameters against lithium heparin and on d-dimer against sodium citrate.
All correlation coefficients were close to 0.99. The Bland-Altman analyses presented a satisfactory correspondence for all analytes. All the hematological examinations demonstrated comparable results between EDTA and the novel formulation, except for platelet counts analyzed by impedance method, but not by fluorescence. We detected lower mean platelet volume with/without outliers (5.06%)/(5.13%) in the novel formulation and increased mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (2.55%). All the biochemistry analytes demonstrated comparable results between lithium heparin and the novel tube. d-dimer showed comparable results between citrated blood and the novel formulation after dilution correction.
We describe a novel antithrombotic formulation tube with the potential to be introduced into clinical laboratories for simultaneous analysis of thirty-two blood analytes.
Introduction
Evidence about the consequences of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection in pregnancy is rapidly increasing; however, data on antibody response and risk ...of transmission during pregnancy and delivery are still limited. The aim of this study was to evaluate if SARS‐CoV‐2 is detectable in vaginal swabs and whether antibodies against SARS‐CoV‐2 are present in maternal and umbilical cord blood of pregnant women with confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2.
Material and methods
A single‐unit prospective cohort study in Denmark including pregnant women with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection confirmed by a pharyngeal swab between August 20, 2020, and March 1, 2021, who gave birth during the same period. All patients admitted to the maternity ward and antepartum clinic were screened for SARS‐CoV‐2 infection. A maternal blood sample and vaginal swabs were collected at inclusion. If included antepartum, these samples were repeated intrapartum when an umbilical cord blood sample was also collected. Swabs were analyzed for SARS‐CoV‐2 and blood samples were analyzed for SARS‐CoV‐2 total antibodies. Placental and neonatal swabs as well as placental histopathological examinations were performed on clinical indications.
Results
We included 28 women, of whom four had serious maternal or fetal outcomes including one case of neonatal death. Within the first 8 days after confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection, SARS‐CoV‐2 was detectable in two vaginal swabs (2/28) and SARS‐CoV‐2 antibodies were detected in 1 of 13 women. From 16 days after confirmed infection, antibodies were observed in 19 of 21 of women. Antibodies in cord blood were not detected during the first 16 days after confirmed infection (n = 7). However, from 26 days, antibodies were present in 16 of 17 cord blood samples of seropositive mothers. Placental examination in two cases of severe fetal outcomes preceded by reduced fetal movements revealed SARS‐CoV‐2 in swabs and severe histopathological abnormalities.
Conclusions
SARS‐CoV‐2 was detected in only 2 of 28 vaginal swabs within 8 days after confirmed infection in pregnant women. Our data suggest that maternal seroconversion occurs between days 8 and 16, whereas antibodies in cord blood of seropositive mothers were present in the majority from 26 days after confirmed infection. Additional data are needed regarding timing of seroconversion for the mother and appearance of antibodies in cord blood.
Abstract Purpose To describe the pattern of failure in a national consecutive cohort of patients with glottic squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) treated with primary radiotherapy (RT) with curative ...intent over a 41-year period. Materials and methods All patients undergoing curative treatment for a glottic SCC diagnosed in Denmark between 1971 and 2011 were included and followed from the first contact with the oncology center to death or February 15, 2015. Results 5001 patients were identified of whom 98% had primary RT. The median follow-up was 9.1 years/5.7 years (patients alive/patients who died). Ten patients were lost to follow-up. In total 1511 failures were observed; of these 93%, 11% and 5% included T site, N site, and M site, respectively. For patients diagnosed in the 70s and the 00s, respectively, the five-year incidences were: local failure (32% vs 19%), loco-regional failure (34% vs 21%), laryngectomy (26% vs 10%), laryngectomy-free survival (48% vs 62%), disease-free survival (62% vs 68%), and overall survival (62% vs 68%). The five-year incidence of ultimate failure (13–16%) remained statistically unchanged. Conclusion From the 70s to the 00s a continually improving primary disease-control was observed with a concurrent decrease in the incidence of laryngectomy. The survival rate was significantly higher in the 00s compared to the previous three decades.
Oral mucositis induces severe oral pain in head and neck cancer patients. There is at this point no effective pain treatment without considerable side effects.
The aim of this pilot study was to ...investigate pain reduction in oral cavity and pharynx in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) with oral mucositis, the location of anesthetic effect, and duration of pain relief, after a single-dose administration of a 25 mg bupivacaine lozenge.
Ten patients with HNC suffering from oral mucositis pain were included. The patients assessed pain in the oral cavity and pharynx on a visual analogue scale (from 0 to 100 mm) at baseline and up to 3 hours after the lozenge was dissolved. Possible adverse events were registered.
The baseline pain was 51 mm (range: 30-73 mm) in the oral cavity and 58 mm (range: 35-70 mm) in the pharynx. When the lozenge was dissolved, both oral (-27 mm; range: -3 to -52 mm;
= 0.0003) and pharynx pain (-20 mm; range: -3 to -45 mm;
= 0.008) were significantly reduced. After 180 minutes, the mean reduction in pain was significant in the oral cavity (-18 mm; range: -8 to -30 mm;
< 0.0001) but not in the pharynx (-8 mm; range: +4 to -23 mm;
= 0.12). No adverse events were observed.
The results indicate that the bupivacaine lozenge has a clinically significant and long-lasting pain-relieving effect on pain because of oral mucositis in patients with HNC.
This book will cover both the evidence for biofilms in many chronic bacterial infections as well as the problems facing these infections such as diagnostics and treatment regimes. A still increasing ...interest and emphasis on the sessile bacterial lifestyle biofilms has been seen since it was realized that that less than 0.1% of the total microbial biomass lives in the planktonic mode of growth. The term was coined in 1978 by Costerton et al. who defined the term biofilm for the first time.In 1993 the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) recognised that the biofilmmode of growth was relevant to microbiology. Lately many articles have been published on the clinical implications of bacterial biofilms. Both original articles and reviews concerning the biofilm problem are available.
Expert‐curated, disease‐focused pathways have been created and used to extract additional value from a set of large‐scale phospho‐proteomics and micro‐array experiments. Rat cortical neurons were ...treated with amyloid‐beta as a disease model of Alzheimer’s disease, to elucidate the immediate signaling response (primarily changes in the phospho‐proteome) and the subsequent initial wave of transcriptional response. The disease pathways provided an explicit description of disease hypotheses containing hundreds of proteins and references, which were used as ‘fishing nets’ into the experimental data using very reliable predicted interactions from the STRING database to link differentially modulated genes/proteins to pathway proteins. This linking is performed using multiple benchmarked data sources such as genomic context, high‐throughput experiments, co‐expression and text mining, and possibly intermediate genes/proteins. The aim was primarily to provide new disease modifying proteins apt for target validation studies and secondarily to extend and compare the expert curated disease pathways with the experimental observations.
An increasing number of applications include recommender systems that have to perform search in a non-metric similarity space, thus creating an increasing demand for efficient yet flexible indexing ...techniques to facilitate similarity search. This demand is further fueled by the growing volume of data available to recommender systems.
This paper addresses the demand in the specific domain of music recommendation. The paper presents the Music On Demand framework where music retrieval is performed in a continuous, stream-based fashion. Similarity measures between songs, which are computed on high-dimensional feature spaces, often do not obey the triangular inequality, meaning that existing indexing techniques for high-dimensional data are infeasible.
The most prominent contribution of the paper is the proposal of an indexing approach that is effective for non-metric similarities. This is achieved by using a number of bitmap indexes combined with effective bitmap compression techniques. Experiments show that the approach scales well.
Chronic infections caused by microbial biofilms represent an important clinical challenge. The recalcitrance of microbial biofilms to antimicrobials and to the immune system is a major cause of ...persistence and clinical recurrence of these infections. In this Review, we present the extent of the clinical problem, and the mechanisms underlying the tolerance of biofilms to antibiotics and to host responses. We also explore the role of biofilms in the development of antimicrobial resistance mechanisms.
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