Objectives
To estimate the effect of HIV infection on the risk of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW) among Chinese pregnancy women.
Design
A retrospective cohort study included ...HIV-positive pregnant women who gave birth to singletons in Chengdu between 2011 and 2020 and and HIV-negative pregnant women who delivered singletons at the Chengdu Women’s and Children’s Central Hospital in 2020.
Setting
Data of pregnant women living with HIV were extracted from China’s Information System of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Management. Additionally, information for HIV-negative pregnant women was extracted from the electronic medical record system of the Chengdu Women’s and Children’s Central Hospital.
Participants
755 HIV-positive women and 15,094 HIV-negative pregnant women were included.
Primary outcome measures
PTB and LBW rates, which were defined by gestational weeks and birth weight.
Results
The incidences of PTB and LBW (13.51% and 14.17%, respectively) were significantly higher in the HIV-positive group compared with the HIV-negative group (6.82% and 4.65%). Propensity score matching was performed to improve comparability of the two groups, resulting in 1590 pregnancies with 558 HIV-positive and 1032 HIV-negative women in the final analysis. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the effect of maternal HIV status on adverse pregnancy outcomes. After propensity score matching and controlling the potential confounders, HIV infection was strongly associated with higher chances of LBW and PTB with adjusted odd ratios (95% confidence interval) of 2.53 (1.74 to 3.68) and 1.95 (1.33 to 2.85), respectively.
Conclusions
HIV infection was significantly associated with increased risks of PTB and LBW in Chinese pregnant women. Future studies should focus on investigating the mechanisms underlying the association between HIV infection and adverse birth outcomes, and on identifying strategies to reduce the incidence of PTB and LBW in pregnant women living with HIV.
Background After China ended its 'dynamic zero-COVID policy' on 7 December 2022, a large-scale outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infections emerged across the country. We conducted a hospital-wide ...prospective study to document the epidemiological characteristics of the outbreak among healthcare workers in a hospital of Chengdu, where no previous staff SARS-CoV-2 infections were detected. Methods All hospital staff members were invited to complete an online questionnaire on COVID-19 in January 2023, and SARS-CoV-2 infection cases were followed up by telephone in June 2023 to collect data on long COVID. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Results A total of 2,899 hospital staff (93.5%) completed the online questionnaire, and 86.4% were infected with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron. The clinical manifestations of these patients were characterized by a high incidence of systemic symptoms. Cough (83.4%), fatigue (79.8%) and fever (74.3%) were the most frequently reported symptoms. Multivariable logistic analysis revealed that females adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.42, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.07-1.88 and clinical practitioners (aOR: 10.32, 95% CI: 6.57-16.20) were associated with an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, whereas advanced age greater than or equal to 60 years (aOR: 0.30, 95% CI: 0.19-0.49) and a three-dose COVID-19 vaccination with the most recent dose administered within 3 months before 7 December 2022 (aOR: 0.44, 95% CI: 0.23-0.87 for within 1 month; aOR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.22-0.97 for within 1-3 months) were associated with reduced risk. Among the cases, 4.27% experienced long COVID of fatigue, brain fog or both, with the majority reporting minor symptoms. Conclusion Our findings provide a snapshot of the epidemiological situation of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in Chengdu after China's deregulation of COVID-19 control. Data in the study can aid in the development and implementation of effective measures to protect healthcare workers and maintain the integrity of healthcare systems during challenging times such as a rapid and widespread Omicron outbreak. Keywords: COVID-19, China, Incidence, Omicron, Associated factors, Symptoms
To report the experience of health QR code application in Chengdu's anti-epidemic measures including circle-layer management, hospital triage system and healthcare plan for quarantined pregnant women ...and children during the summer outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Delta strain in 2021 and to evaluate these measures.
We comprehensively summarized Chengdu's health code application in the circle-layer management (a set of stringent confinement measures of places confirmed cases and close contacts have recently been to and less strict quarantine measures of surrounding areas), hospital triage system, and healthcare plan for quarantined pregnant women and children. We also assessed the effectiveness or efficiency of these measures by analyzing the number of different cases with confirmed COVID-19 infections or epidemiological history, the attitude of quarantined pregnant women toward the summer outbreak and healthcare services, as well as the time needed for obtaining epidemiological history and accuracy of health-code-based hospital triage system.
The circle-layer management lasted 15 days and ended with no community or nosocomial transmission happened. Approximately 70 pregnant women and 600 children below 6-year-old were quarantined. Four home visits and two patient transfers were performed. Online survey indicated that about 80% of quarantined women felt satisfactory about the healthcare service. The novel triage system identified 137/221 (61.99%) patients with epidemiological history from patients with yellow health code, and 71/4504 (1.57%) patients from patients with green health code in our hospital (p < 0.001). The health QR code markedly outperformed the traditional methods in the efficiency experiment of obtaining epidemiological history (3.52 ± 0.98 vs 78.91 ± 23.18 seconds, P < 0.001).
The circle-layer management has successfully and precisely prevented the spread of the summer outbreak of COVID-19 in Chengdu. The health-code-based triage system showed great effectiveness and efficiency in triaging patients with epidemiological history. The healthcare services for quarantined pregnant women has basically met their needs.
Fever is one of the most typical clinical symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and non-contact infrared thermometers (NCITs) are commonly used to screen for fever. However, there is a ...lack of authoritative data to define a "fever" when an NCIT is used and previous studies have shown that NCIT readings fluctuate widely depending on ambient temperatures and the body surface site screened. The aim of this study was to establish cut-off points for normal temperatures of different body sites (neck, forehead, temples, and wrist) and investigate the accuracy of NCITs at various ambient temperatures to improve the standardization and accuracy of fever screening.
A prospective investigation was conducted among 904 participants in the outpatient and emergency departments of Chengdu Women's and Children's Central Hospital. Body temperature was measured using NCITs and mercury axillary thermometers. A receiver operating characteristic curve was used to determine the accuracy of body temperature detection at the four body surface sites. Data on participant characteristics were also collected.
Among the four surface sites, the neck temperature detection group had the highest accuracy. When the neck temperature was 37.35°C as the optimum fever diagnostic threshold, the sensitivity was 0.866. The optimum fever diagnostic thresholds for forehead, temporal, and wrist temperature were 36.65°C, 36.65°C, and 36.75°C, respectively. Moreover, triple neck temperature detection had the highest sensitivity, up to 0.998, whereas the sensitivity of triple wrist temperature detections was 0.949. Notably, the accuracy of NCITs significantly reduced when the temperature was lower than 18°C.
Neck temperature had the highest accuracy among the four NCIT temperature measurement sites, with an optimum fever diagnostic threshold of 37.35°C. Considering the findings reported in our study, we recommend triple neck temperature detection with NCITs as the fever screening standard for COVID-19.
Four months after the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Wuhan, the national epidemic has been effectively controlled in China. In Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province, several ...management measures, which have been proven to be effective, are taken to prevent pregnant women from being infected with COVID-19. Firstly, Chengdu formulated and issued the “Working Opinions on the Management of Maternal Women during the Epidemic Period of COVID-19 Infection” immediately after the outbreak. Secondly, some basic information of pregnant women returning from high-risk areas and countries is requested to be reported on a daily basis. Thirdly, a group of experts in Obstetrics, Pediatrics and Hospital Infection Management supervise the implementation of the COVID-19 health care services for pregnant women in primary care institutes. Fourthly, the list of health institutes providing services for confirmed and suspected cases was determined and announced to the public by the government promptly. Additionally, the prevention of mother to infant transmission of HIV is continually strictly practiced during the period of the COVID-19 epidemic. Lastly, all inpatients in the health facilities of Chengdu, including maternity hospitals, are required to have a COVID-19 RT-PCR test to further prevent nosocomial infection. Now, many people living in high-risk countries are coming to Chengdu, and it is therefore necessary to make the prevention and control measures a long-term process.
To investigate HIV infection status and its influence factors in men who have sex with men (MSM) in Sichuan province.
A face to face investigation and Syphilis and HIV serological detection were ...conducted among 2 783 MSM who have the insertion of oral or anal sex with men over the past year recruited by snowball sampling and respondent driven sampling methods in nine cities' Gay venues of Sichuan province. χ(2) test and logistic regression analysis were used for statistical analysis.
A total of 2 783 MSM were surveyed, of which HIV and Syphilis infection rates were 11.1% (147/2 783) , 5.3% (310/2 783) , respectively. The HIV infection rates of <20 year-old age group, 20-29 year-old age group, 30-39 year-old age group, 40-49 year-old age group, ≥ 50 year-old age group were 6.6% (15/227), 9.7% (143/1 471), 11.8% (80/679), 18.0% (53/294), 17.0% (19/112) (χ(2) = 25.91, P < 0.05). The risk of HIV infection in 30-39 year-old age group, 40-50 year-old age group,> 50 years age group were 2.05 (1.14-3.69) times, 3.24
Migraine is a primary neuropsychological disorder, although its etiology and pathogenesis are unknown. It has been reported that using contingent negative variation, the periodicity of migraine ...attacks is three days in adults. However, there is still a lack of relevant reports about the periodicity of migraine without aura in adults. Therefore, we investigated the changes of contingent negative variation in adults with migraine without aura from three to seven days after migraine attacks in order to provide the basis for exploring the circulation periodicity of migraine without aura. This prospective, observational study involved a group of 34 individuals with migraine without aura, who were screened during the three to seven days after a migraine attack without aura. A healthy group (31 individuals) was used as controls to assess the amplitudes of contingent negative variation and habituation of early contingent negative variation. Indices of the amplitudes included overall contingent negative variation, initial contingent negative variation, terminal contingent negative variation, and postoperative negative contingent variation. Differences between these indicators were analyzed. No significant difference was found between the patient and control groups for either the amplitudes of these measures of contingent negative variation or habituation of the early contingent negative variation for three to seven days after a migraine attack without aura (all P > 0.05). Thus, the study reported here found that the periodicity of migraine attacks without aura in adults is more than three days.
Change detection (CD) is an important task in remote sensing (RS) imagery which has seen tremendous advances in recent years with the progress of deep neural networks. Although convolutional neural ...network (CNN) and transformer-based methods work sufficiently well, the building specificity is usually less considered to contribute to the performance improvement. In this letter, we propose a global and specific high-frequency cues guidance network for building CD, called GSHF-Net. More specifically, a high-frequency cues extraction module is introduced to provide global building-specific edge cues, which consists of a high-frequency cues extraction block (HFEB) and an attention-guidance block (AGB). Subsequently, we design a result-aware alignment to mitigate the effect of building slight offset in co- registered images on the introduction of high-frequency information to aid edge recovery. Extensive experiments were performed on LEVIR-CD and WHU-CD, and our GSHF-Net reached the state-of-the-art results of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">F 1~90.18 </tex-math></inline-formula> and 89.53, respectively.
Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI, EC 5.3.4.1) is a thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase that plays a crucial role in catalyzing the oxidation and rearrangement of disulfides in substrate proteins. In ...plants, PDI is primarily involved in regulating seed germination and development, facilitating the oxidative folding of storage proteins in the endosperm, and also contributing to the formation of pollen. However, the role of PDI in root growth has not been previously studied. This research investigated the impact of PDI gene deficiency in plants by using 16F16 2-(2-Chloroacetyl)-2,3,4,9-tetrahydro-1-methyl-1H-pyrido3,4-bindole-1-carboxylic acid methyl ester, a small-molecule inhibitor of PDI, to remove functional redundancy. The results showed that the growth of Arabidopsis roots was significantly inhibited when treated with 16F16. To further investigate the effects of 16F16 treatment, we conducted expression profiling of treated roots using RNA sequencing and a Tandem Mass Tag (TMT)-based quantitative proteomics approach at both the transcriptomic and proteomic levels. Our analysis revealed 994 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) at the transcript level, which were predominantly enriched in pathways associated with "phenylpropane biosynthesis", "plant hormone signal transduction", "plant-pathogen interaction" and "starch and sucrose metabolism" pathways. Additionally, we identified 120 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) at the protein level. These proteins were mainly enriched in pathways such as "phenylpropanoid biosynthesis", "photosynthesis", "biosynthesis of various plant secondary metabolites", and "biosynthesis of secondary metabolites" pathways. The comprehensive transcriptome and proteome analyses revealed a regulatory network for root shortening in Arabidopsis seedlings under 16F16 treatment, mainly involving phenylpropane biosynthesis and plant hormone signal transduction pathways. This study enhances our understanding of the significant role of PDIs in Arabidopsis root growth and provides insights into the regulatory mechanisms of root shortening following 16F16 treatment.
The cellular DNA sensor cGMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) detects cytosolic viral DNA via the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) to initiate innate antiviral response. Herpesviruses are known to target ...key immune signaling pathways to persist in an immune-competent host. Marek's disease virus (MDV), a highly pathogenic and oncogenic herpesvirus of chickens, can antagonize host innate immune responses to achieve persistent infection. With a functional screen, we identified five MDV proteins that blocked beta interferon (IFN-β) induction downstream of the cGAS-STING pathway. Specifically, the MDV major oncoprotein Meq impeded the recruitment of TANK-binding kinase 1 and IFN regulatory factor 7 (IRF7) to the STING complex, thereby inhibiting IRF7 activation and IFN-β induction. Meq overexpression markedly reduced antiviral responses stimulated by cytosolic DNA, whereas knockdown of Meq heightened MDV-triggered induction of IFN-β and downstream antiviral genes. Moreover, Meq-deficient MDV induced more IFN-β production than wild-type MDV. Meq-deficient MDV also triggered a more robust CD8+ T cell response than wild-type MDV. As such, the Meq-deficient MDV was highly attenuated in replication and lymphoma induction compared to wild-type MDV. Taken together, these results revealed that MDV evades the cGAS-STING DNA sensing pathway, which underpins the efficient replication and oncogenesis. These findings improve our understanding of the virus-host interaction in MDV-induced lymphoma and may contribute to the development of novel vaccines against MDV infection.
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