The paper discusses the implementation of Hong Kong's tailor-made sewage surveillance programme led by the Government, which has demonstrated how an efficient and well-organized sewage surveillance ...system can complement conventional epidemiological surveillance to facilitate the planning of intervention strategies and actions for combating COVID-19 pandemic in real-time. This included the setting up of a comprehensive sewerage network-based SARS-CoV-2 virus surveillance programme with 154 stationary sites covering 6 million people (or 80 % of the total population), and employing an intensive monitoring programme to take samples from each stationary site every 2 days. From 1 January to 22 May 2022, the daily confirmed case count started with 17 cases per day on 1 January to a maximum of 76,991 cases on 3 March and dropped to 237 cases on 22 May. During this period, a total of 270 “Restriction-Testing Declaration” (RTD) operations at high-risk residential areas were conducted based on the sewage virus testing results, where over 26,500 confirmed cases were detected with a majority being asymptomatic. In addition, Compulsory Testing Notices (CTN) were issued to residents, and the distribution of Rapid Antigen Test kits was adopted as alternatives to RTD operations in areas of moderate risk. These measures formulated a tiered and cost-effective approach to combat the disease in the local setting. Some ongoing and future enhancement efforts to improve efficacy are discussed from the perspective of wastewater-based epidemiology. Forecast models on case counts based on sewage virus testing results were also developed with R2 of 0.9669–0.9775, which estimated that up to 22 May 2022, around 2,000,000 people (~67 % higher than the total number of 1,200,000 reported to the health authority, due to various constraints or limitations) had potentially contracted the disease, which is believed to be reflecting the real situation occurring in a highly urbanized metropolis like Hong Kong.
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•Hong Kong successfully applied Sewage Surveillance for real-time COVID-19 tracking.•The success came from the synergy among government, academic and private sectors.•Sewage data provided early warning with 2–4 days lead time to enhance preparedness.•Robust regression models were developed to estimate actual infection numbers.•City-scale sewage data informed planning of preventive measures to combat COVID-19.
The Housing Authority in Hong Kong provides around 30,000 subsidized residential units per annum. It is the only major client in Hong Kong requiring prefabrication in its public housing construction, ...a policy which began in the mid-1980s. Recently, the government has started to promote prefabrication as a general principle to improve buildability, to increase quality and efficiency as well as to reduce construction wastes. However, an analysis of public tender results between 1988 and 2002 shows that the market appears to be less competitive in this housing sector than the other institutional building sector. The former mainly consists of the construction of large residential housing estates with their auxiliary commercial centres and car parks, whilst the latter are non-residential purpose-built structures such as schools and police stations, though occasionally residential quarters are constructed for the disciplinary forces. During this 15-year period, between 38% and 74% of the total annual public housing contracts, by value, were undertaken by only three contractors. Meanwhile in the institutional building sector, the range was between 24 and 61%. This raises the concern that the prefabrication requirement might have raised the market entry barriers, and probably construction costs as well. This study addressed the competition issue by measuring and comparing the Herfinndahl–Hershamann indices (HHI) of the public housing and the institutional building sectors. Regression analyses of the HHIs were then performed on various measures of contract values and a dummy variable representing the public housing or the institutional building sector. The analyses show that prefabrication, ceteris paribus, is not related to HHI. We conclude that the prefabrication requirement by itself does not seem to have raised the barriers to entry to prefabricated housing construction.
In the 1999 Policy Address by Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee-hwa, one major target listed is 'Making Hong Kong an Ideal Home . . . Every citizen, every business, every government ...department and bureau need to start working in partnership to ach
This article reviews the role of selective internal irradiation (SIR) with yttrium-90 ((90)Y) microspheres for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Studies were identified by searching Medline and PubMed ...databases for articles from 1990 to 2009 using the keywords "selective internal irradiation," "hepatocellular carcinoma," "therapeutic embolization," and "yttrium-90."
(90)Y microspheres are a safe and well-tolerated therapy for unresectable HCC (median survival range, 7 -21.6 months). The evidence was limited to cohort studies and comparative studies with historical control. (90)Y microspheres have been reported to downstage unresectable HCC to allow for salvage treatments with curative intent, act as a bridging therapy before liver transplantation, and treat HCC with curative intent for patients who are not surgical candidates because of comorbidities.
(90)Y microsphere is recommended as an option of palliative therapy for large or multifocal HCC without major portal vein invasion or extrahepatic spread. It can also be used for recurrent unresectable HCC, as a bridging therapy before liver transplantation, as a tumor downstaging treatment, and as a curative treatment for patients with associated comorbidities who are not candidates for surgery.
Background
Contemporary risk‐directed treatment has improved the outcome of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and TCF3::PBX1 fusion. In this study, the authors seek to identify ...prognostic factors that can be used to further improve outcome.
Methods
The authors studied 384 patients with this genotype treated on Chinese Children's Cancer Group ALL‐2015 protocol between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2019. All patients provisionally received intensified chemotherapy in the intermediate‐risk arm without prophylactic cranial irradiation; those with high minimal residual disease (MRD) ≥1% at day 46 (end) of remission induction were candidates for hematopoietic cell transplantation.
Results
The overall 5‐year event‐free survival was 84.4% (95% confidence interval CI, 80.6–88.3) and 5‐year overall survival 88.9% (95% CI, 85.5–92.4). Independent factors associated with lower 5‐year event‐free survival were male sex (80.4%, 95% CI, 74.8–86.4 vs. 88.9%, 95% CI, 84.1–93.9 in female, p = .03) and positive day 46 MRD (≥0.01%) (62.1%, 95% CI, 44.2–87.4 vs. 87.1%, 95% CI, 83.4–90.9 in patients with negative MRD, p < .001). The presence of testicular leukemia at diagnosis (n = 10) was associated with particularly dismal 5‐year event‐free survival (33.3% 95% CI, 11.6–96.1 vs. 83.0% 95% CI, 77.5–88.9 in the other 192 male patients, p < .001) and was an independent risk factor (hazard ratio HR, 5.7; 95% CI, 2.2–14.5, p < .001).
Conclusions
These data suggest that the presence of positive MRD after intensive remission induction and testicular leukemia at diagnosis are indicators for new molecular therapeutics or immunotherapy in patients with TCF3::PBX1 ALL.
Minimal residual disease ≥0.01% at the end of remission induction was associated with an inferior event‐free survival in patients with TCF3::PBX1 acute lymphoblastic leukemia despite intensified chemotherapy. The presence of overt testicular leukemia conferred a particularly poor outcome.
The use of medication is effective in managing metabolic syndrome (MetS), but side effects have led to increased attention on using nutraceuticals and supplements. Astaxanthin shows positive effects ...in reducing the risk of MetS, but results from individual studies are inconclusive. This systematic review summarizes the latest evidence of astaxanthin in adults with risk factors of MetS. A systematic search of English and Chinese randomized controlled trials in 14 electronic databases from inception to 30 June 2021 was performed. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts, and conducted full-text review, quality appraisal, and extraction of data. Risk of bias was assessed by PEDro. A total of 7 studies met the inclusion criteria with 321 participants. Six studies were rated to have excellent methodological quality, while the remaining one was rated at good. Results show marginal effects of astaxanthin on reduction in total cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and a significant attenuating effect on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Further robust evidence is needed to examine the effects of astaxanthin in adults at risk of MetS.
Allergic asthma is a highly prevalent airway inflammatory disease, which involves the interaction between the immune system, environmental and genetic factors. Co-relation between allergic asthma and ...gut microbiota upon the change of diet have been widely reported, implicating that oral intake of alternative medicines possess a potential in the management of allergic asthma. Previous clinical, in vivo, and in vitro studies have shown that the Pentaherbs formula (PHF) comprising five traditional Chinese herbal medicines Lonicerae Flos, Menthae Herba, Phellodendri Cortex, Moutan Cortex, and Atractylodis Rhizoma possesses an anti-allergic and anti-inflammatory potential through suppressing various immune effector cells. In the present study, to further investigate the anti-inflammatory activities of PHF in allergic asthma, intragastrical administration of PHF was found to reduce airway hyperresponsiveness, airway wall remodeling and goblet cells hyperplasia in an ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic asthma mice model. PHF also significantly suppressed pulmonary eosinophilia and asthma-related cytokines IL-4 and IL-33 in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. In addition, PHF modulated the splenic regulatory T cells population, up-regulated regulatory interleukin (IL)-10 in serum, altered the microbial community structure and the short chain fatty acids content in the gut of the asthmatic mice. This study sheds light on the anti-inflammatory activities of PHF on allergic asthma. It also provides novel in vivo evidence that herbal medicines can ameliorate symptoms of allergic diseases may potentially prevent the development of subsequent atopic disorder such as allergic asthma through the influence of the gut microbiota.
Summary
The effect of prolonged pulse therapy with vincristine and dexamethasone (VD) during maintenance therapy on the outcome of paediatric patients with TCF3‐PBX1 positive acute lymphoblastic ...leukaemia (ALL) remains uncertain. We conducted non‐inferiority analysis of 263 newly diagnosed TCF3‐PBX1 positive ALL children who were stratified and randomly assigned (1:1) to receive seven additional VD pulses (the control group) or not (the experimental group) in the CCCG‐ALL‐2015 clinical trial from January 2015 to December 2019 (ChiCTR‐IPR‐14005706). There was no significant difference in baseline characteristics between the two groups. With a median follow‐up of 4.2 years, the 5‐year event‐free survival (EFS) and 5‐year overall survival (OS) in the control group were 90.1% (95% confidence interval CI 85.1–95.4) and 94.7% (95% CI, 90.9–98.6) comparable to those in the experimental group 89.2% (95% CI 84.1–94.7) and 95.6% (95% CI 91.8–99.6), respectively. Non‐inferiority was established as a one‐sided 95% upper confidence bound for the difference in probability of 5‐year EFS was 0.003, and that for 5‐year OS was 0.01 by as‐treated analysis. Thus, omission of pulse therapy with VD beyond one year of treatment did not affect the outcome of children with TCF3‐PBX1 positive ALL.
Abstract
The advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies enable the characterization of transcriptomic profiles at the cellular level and demonstrate great promise in bulk sample ...analysis thereby offering opportunities to transfer gene signature from scRNA-seq to bulk data. However, the gene expression signatures identified from single cells are typically inapplicable to bulk RNA-seq data due to the profiling differences of distinct sequencing technologies. Here, we propose single-cell pair-wise gene expression (scPAGE), a novel method to develop single-cell gene pair signatures (scGPSs) that were beneficial to bulk RNA-seq classification to transfer knowledge across platforms. PAGE was adopted to tackle the challenge of profiling differences. We applied the method to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and identified the scGPS from mouse scRNA-seq that allowed discriminating between AML and control cells. The scGPS was validated in bulk RNA-seq datasets and demonstrated better performance (average area under the curve AUC = 0.96) than the conventional gene expression strategies (average AUC$\le$ 0.88) suggesting its potential in disclosing the molecular mechanism of AML. The scGPS also outperformed its bulk counterpart, which highlighted the benefit of gene signature transfer. Furthermore, we confirmed the utility of scPAGE in sepsis as an example of other disease scenarios. scPAGE leveraged the advantages of single-cell profiles to enhance the analysis of bulk samples revealing great potential of transferring knowledge from single-cell to bulk transcriptome studies.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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