•Long outcomes of a large sample of hospitalized CPVID-19 patients were analyzed.•A large proportion of hospitalized COVID-19 patients had a reduced functional status six months after ...hospitalization.•ICU patients referred a large decrease of their functional status compared with not ICU patients six months after hospitalization.•Female sex, age, length of hospital stay, mechanical ventilation, and ICU admission were associated with limitations in everyday life .
Abstract
Background
The prognosis of patients with COVID-19 infection is uncertain. We derived and validated a new risk model for predicting progression to disease severity, hospitalization, ...admission to intensive care unit (ICU) and mortality in patients with COVID-19 infection (Gal-COVID-19 scores).
Methods
This is a retrospective cohort study of patients with COVID-19 infection confirmed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in Galicia, Spain. Data were extracted from electronic health records of patients, including age, sex and comorbidities according to International Classification of Primary Care codes (ICPC-2). Logistic regression models were used to estimate the probability of disease severity. Calibration and discrimination were evaluated to assess model performance.
Results
The incidence of infection was 0.39% (10 454 patients). A total of 2492 patients (23.8%) required hospitalization, 284 (2.7%) were admitted to the ICU and 544 (5.2%) died. The variables included in the models to predict severity included age, gender and chronic comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, liver disease, chronic kidney disease and haematological cancer. The models demonstrated a fair–good fit for predicting hospitalization {AUC area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve 0.77 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.76, 0.78}, admission to ICU AUC 0.83 (95%CI 0.81, 0.85) and death AUC 0.89 (95%CI 0.88, 0.90).
Conclusions
The Gal-COVID-19 scores provide risk estimates for predicting severity in COVID-19 patients. The ability to predict disease severity may help clinicians prioritize high-risk patients and facilitate the decision making of health authorities.
The incidence of bacterial respiratory tract infections is growing. In a context of increasing antibiotic resistance and lack of new classes of antibiotics, inhaled antibiotics emerge as a promising ...therapeutic strategy. Although they are generally used for cystic fibrosis, their use in other conditions is becoming more frequent, including no-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis, pneumonia and mycobacterial infections.
Inhaled antibiotics exert beneficial microbiological effects in bronchiectasis and chronic bronchial infection. In nosocomial and ventilator-associated pneumonia, aerosolized antibiotics improve cure rates and bacterial eradication. In refractory Mycobacterium avium complex infections, amikacin liposome inhalation suspension is more effective in achieving long-lasting sputum conversion. In relation to biological inhaled antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides, interfering RNA and bacteriophages), currently in development, there is no still enough evidence that support their use in clinical practice.
The effective antimicrobiological activity of inhaled antibiotics, added to their potential to overcoming resistances to systemic antibiotics, make inhaled antibiotics a plausible alternative.
Background
Asthma is heterogeneous disease with different phenotypes, endotypes and severities. Definition of these subgroups requires the identification of biomarkers in biological samples, and ...serum proteomics is a useful and minimally invasive method for this purpose. Therefore, the aim of this study was to detect serum proteins whose abundance is distinctively associated with different asthma phenotypes (allergic vs nonallergic) or severities.
Methods
For each group of donors (32 healthy controls, 43 allergic rhinitis patients and 192 asthmatics with different phenotypes and severities), we generated two pools of sera that were analysed by a shotgun MS approach based on combinatorial peptide ligand libraries and iTRAQ‐LC‐MS/MS.
Results
MS analyses identified 18 proteins with a differential abundance. Functional/network study of these proteins identified key processes for asthma pathogenesis, such as complement activation, extracellular matrix organization, platelet activation and degranulation, or post‐translational protein phosphorylation. Furthermore, our results highlighted an enrichment of the “Regulation of Insulin‐like Growth Factor (IGF) transport and uptake by Insulin‐like Growth Factor Binding Proteins (IGFBPs)” route in allergic asthma and the lectin pathway of complement activation in nonallergic asthma. Thus, several proteins (eg IGFALS, HSPG2, FCN2 or MASP1) displayed a differential abundance between the different groups of donors. Particularly, our results revealed IGFALS as a useful biomarker for moderate‐severe allergic asthma.
Conclusion
Our data suggest a set of serum biomarkers, especially IGFALS, capable of differentiating allergic from nonallergic asthma. These proteins reveal different pathophysiological mechanisms and may be useful in the future for diagnosis, prognosis or targeted therapy purposes.
This study identifies serum biomarkers for asthma (allergic and nonallergic asthma) and allergic rhinitis using iTRAQ‐based proteomics. Several proteins from the IGF pathway are increased in allergic asthma. Particularly, IGFALS could be a useful biomarker for this phenotype. Proteins from the lectin pathway of complement activation (FCN2 and MASP1) are increased in non‐allergic asthma. Abbreviations: AHSG, alpha‐2‐HS‐glycoprotein; CALU, calumenin; CPN1, carboxypeptidase N subunit 1; CPLLs, combinatorial peptide ligand libraries; C1R, complement C1r subcomponent; C4B, complement component 4B; F2, prothrombin; FCN2, ficolin 2; HAP, high abundant proteins; HSPG2, basement membrane‐specific heparan sulfate proteoglycan core protein; IGF‐ALS, insulin‐like growth factor binding protein acid labile subunit; iTRAQ, isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation; LAP, low abundant proteins; LC‐MS/MS, liquid chromatography coupled online to tandem mass spectrometry; MASP1, mannan binding lectin serine peptidase 1; NCAM1, neural cell adhesion molecule 1 precursor
Multiple paternity (MP) is defined as the behaviour in which females successfully mate with multiple males leading to offspring from different sires within the same litter. MP seems to be frequent ...and an evolutionary advantage in elasmobranchs. Here the authors report for the first time the occurrence of MP in the cosmopolitan blue shark Prionace glauca L. The evidence, gathered via microsatellite genotyping of pregnant females and their embryos, suggests that MP is very frequent in this species. Knowledge of MP in P. glauca should help describe more precisely its reproductive biology and contribute to the management of its populations.
The pollution caused by heavy metals (HMs) may occur through both natural processes and anthropogenic activities and is found in complex media. The purpose of this review is to summarize the ...state‐of‐art of fluorescent CDs and the sensing applications in a systematic manner. This review intends to provide clues on the origin on the observed selectivity in chemiluminiscence sensors, which was until now a stated but unaddressed question, and still remains open for debate. Indeed, it is tempting to think that CDs possessing functional groups with soft bases at the surface are able to detect soft metal acids, while the opposite is to be suspected for hard acid‐base pairs. However, the literature shows several examples where this trend does not hold. We found that such observation is explained by the involvement of dynamic quenching, which does not involve the formation of a non‐fluorescent complex, as in the case of static quenching. We have provided an interpretation of published data that was not provided by the original authors and offer guidelines to enable the design of CDs to target ions in solution.
Carbon dots are widely applied for fluorescent‐based sensors. The interplay between dynamic and static quenching is essential to design specific sensors.
We have previously reported that primary hippocampal neurons exposed to synaptotoxic amyloid beta oligomers (AβOs), which are likely causative agents of Alzheimer's disease (AD), exhibit abnormal Ca
...signals, mitochondrial dysfunction and defective structural plasticity. Additionally, AβOs-exposed neurons exhibit a decrease in the protein content of type-2 ryanodine receptor (RyR2) Ca
channels, which exert critical roles in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory processes. The antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC) prevents these deleterious effects of AβOs
. The main contribution of the present work is to show that AβOs injections directly into the hippocampus, by engaging oxidation-mediated reversible pathways significantly decreased RyR2 protein content but increased single RyR2 channel activation by Ca
and caused considerable spatial memory deficits. AβOs injections into the CA3 hippocampal region impaired rat performance in the Oasis maze spatial memory task, decreased hippocampal glutathione levels and overall content of plasticity-related proteins (c-Fos, Arc, and RyR2) and increased ERK1/2 phosphorylation. In contrast, in hippocampus-derived mitochondria-associated membranes (MAM) AβOs injections increased RyR2 levels. Rats fed with NAC for 3-weeks prior to AβOs injections displayed comparable redox potential, RyR2 and Arc protein contents, similar ERK1/2 phosphorylation and RyR2 single channel activation by Ca
as saline-injected (control) rats. NAC-fed rats subsequently injected with AβOs displayed the same behavior in the spatial memory task as control rats. Based on the present
results, we propose that redox-sensitive neuronal RyR2 channels partake in the mechanism underlying AβOs-induced memory disruption in rodents.
The boost and strengthening of electromobility are only possible under the simultaneous development of energy storage systems along with their ancillary systems. In this regard, the tms study is ...being broadened as it is in charge of battery packs' good performance and durability. New systems or adaptions of already employed ones are being studied to improve electric vehicle outcomes. In this context, the system presented in this work is a hybrid system between the current cold plates and the lately studied pcm, which is incorporated into a real case electrification of a commercial vehicle. As a result, integrating the pcm buffer into the battery pack's base structure aims to improve mechanical strength while also improving thermal management. The operation analysis results under 6C fast charge and motorway speed discharge showed the capability of the proposed tms. The increase in the system's thermal capacitance by 31.9% when combining the use of cold plate with pcm enabled distributing the heat dissipation along the charge and discharge, despite the weight being increased by 10.14%. Hence, the auxiliary cooling system's peak power was reduced, allowing for size reduction and an energy consumption reduction of 21%. Moreover, the pcm delimits the maximum temperature reached by the system with a reduction at the end of fast charge of more than 10%, serving as a security element with the cold plate switched off. Therefore, the proposed system's weight demerits could be overcome with temperature and auxiliary consumption reductions, proving an effective system for a high-performance vehicle.
The properties of CDs allow their use as fluorescent probes for the detection of metal‐containing ions; the interplay between dynamic and static mechanisms of fluorescence quenching are the key to ...understand the observed selectivity. For more information, see the Review by F. Desdín‐García, J. Deschamps, M. Antuch et al. (DOI: 10.1002/chem.202300188)
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