In New Delhi, India, candidemia affected 15 critically ill coronavirus disease patients admitted to an intensive care unit during April–July 2020. Candida auris accounted for two thirds of cases; ...case-fatality rate was high (60%). Hospital-acquired C. auris infections in coronavirus disease patients may lead to adverse outcomes and additional strain on healthcare resources.
CD4
Foxp3
regulatory T-cells (Tregs) are a unique subset of helper T-cells, which regulate immune response and establish peripheral tolerance. Tregs not only maintain the tone and tenor of an immune ...response by dominant tolerance but, in recent years, have also been identified as key players in resolving tissue inflammation and as mediators of tissue healing. Apart from being diverse in their origin (thymic and peripheral) and location (lymphoid and tissue resident), Tregs are also phenotypically heterogeneous as per the orientation of ongoing immune response. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in the field of Treg biology in general, and non-lymphoid and tissue-resident Tregs in particular. We elaborate upon well-known visceral adipose tissue, colon, skin, and tumor-infiltrating Tregs and newly identified tissue Treg populations as in lungs, skeletal muscle, placenta, and other tissues. Our attempt is to differentiate Tregs based on distinctive properties of their location, origin, ligand specificity, chemotaxis, and specific suppressive mechanisms. Despite ever expanding roles in maintaining systemic homeostasis, Tregs are employed by large varieties of tumors to dampen antitumor immunity. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of Treg biology in the context of inflammation can be instrumental in effectively managing tissue transplantation, autoimmunity, and antitumor immune responses.
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•MOF nanostructures are gaining popularity for chemosensing of various gases.•They show improved chemical stability and favourable uptake capacities.•Future efforts are needed toward ...device level translation of such gas sensors.
Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) are a category of porous crystalline structural materials wherein metal ions or clusters are connected by an organic ligand also known as “strut” or “linker”. The large-scale diversity of metal ions and organic linkers have allowed for the infinite number of possible metal linker combinations along with their ability to form conducting composites. However, their intrinsic defect such as poor conductivity has greatly impeded their full potential, especially in the electronic applications. Hence, MOF based composites and MOF derived nanostructures are being developed with the motive to incorporate advantageous attributes and to compensate the weakness of the individual components. Thus, MOF nanostructures are opening the door for their use for unique and attractive features in wide variety of applications such as sensing (Heavy metals, VOCs, microorganisms), gas storage (H2, CH4), catalysis, optoelectronics and drug delivery etc. Many of these composite materials have been recognized as sensing layer material for the development of high-performance chemo-resistive gas sensors owing to the synergistic effects between them. Herein, the present article presents a critical review on the advancements in sensing performance of MOF and its nanostructures in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, reversibility, stability, shelf life and response and recovery time.
COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone throughout the world and has resulted in the loss of lives of many souls. Due to the restless efforts of the researchers working hard day and night, some ...success has been gained for the detection of virus. As on date, the traditional polymerized chain reactions (PCR), lateral flow devices (LFID) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) are being adapted for the detection of this deadly virus. However, a more exciting avenue is the detection of certain biomarkers associated with this viral infection which can be done by simply re-purposing our existing infrastructure. SARS-CoV-2 viral infection triggers various inflammatory, biochemical and hematological biomarkers. Because of the infection route that the virus follows, it causes significant inflammatory response. As a result, various inflammatory markers have been reported to be closely associated with this infection such as C-reactive proteins, interleukin-6, procalcitonin and ferritin. Sensing of these biomarkers can simultaneously help in understanding the illness level of the affected patient. Also, by monitoring these biomarkers, we can predict the viral infections in those patients who have low SARS-CoV-2 RNA and hence are missed by traditional tests. This can give more targets to the researchers and scientists, working in the area of drug development and provide better prognosis. In this review, we propose to highlight the conventional as well as the non-conventional methods for the detection of these inflammatory biomarkers which can act as a single platform of knowledge for the researchers and scientists working for the treatment of COVID-19.
•Inflammatory, biochemical and hematological biomarkers triggered by SARS-CoV-2.•Inflammatory biomarkers include CRP, IL-6, PCT and ferritin.•Monitoring these help in understanding the illness level of the affected patient.•Review highlight the conventional as well as the non-conventional detection methods.•Biosensors are potential candidates for monitoring infections.
To this end, very recently, a formulation of human mAbs (casirivimab and imdevimab) against SARS-CoV-2 was approved for passive immunotherapy in mild and moderately severe COVID-19 cases in India and ...elsewhere. ...it is valuable and timely to summarize the specificity and reactivity of human mAbs against SARS-CoV-2 and its rapidly emerging variants. Primary targets of SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic neutralizing antibodies The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 is the primary target of neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) (Fig 1A). ...NAbs against SARS-CoV-2 that have either been deployed for therapy or are in advanced stage trials, for the most part, either target the receptor-binding domain (RBD) or the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the spike glycoprotein (Fig 1A and 1B) 1,2. CP, cytoplasmic tail; FP, fusion peptide; HR1, heptad repeat 1; HR2, heptad repeat 2; mAb, monoclonal antibody; NTD, N-terminal domain; PDB, Protein Data Bank; RBD, receptor-binding domain; RBM, receptor-binding motif; SARS-CoV-2, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2; SP, signal peptide; TM, transmembrane domain. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1009885.g001 Therapeutic COVID-19 mAbs in the clinic and in clinical trials Therapeutic mAbs for COVID-19 treatment have been developed in accelerated time and the pace has been unprecedented for any disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a recognized mutation is elevated to a “variant of concern” (VOC) when the acquisition of a new mutation allows for increased viral transmission, increased fatality, and a significant decrease in the effectiveness of therapy and vaccines.
Despite multiple benefits of breast milk, the rates of exclusive breastfeeding in developing countries are low.
To evaluate the efficacy of early skin -to -skin contact (SSC) on the rate of exclusive ...breastfeeding (EBF) at 6 weeks of age among term neonates born by vaginal delivery.
Term neonates born by vaginal delivery and did not require any resuscitation were randomized at birth to SSC (n=100) and control (n=100) group. Immediately after clamping the umbilical cord, SSC group neonates were placed on the bare bosom of mother and control group neonates were placed under a radiant warmer for a period of 45 minutes each while mothers underwent management of the third stage of labor and episiotomy repair. Pain experienced by mother during episiotomy repair was recorded using a numerical pain scale The primary outcome evaluated was the rate of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 weeks of postnatal age.
A significantly higher proportion of neonates were exclusively breastfeed at 6 weeks of age in the SSC group than in the control group (72% vs. 57.6%, p=0.04, relative risk: 1.3, 95% confidence interval: 1.0 -1.6). The pain score during episiotomy repair in mothers of the SSC group was significantly lower than the control group (4.74±0.85 versus 5.34±0.81; P <0.01).
Early SSC significantly improved the rate of exclusively breastfeeding at 6 weeks of age among healthy term neonates. An important additional effect was a decrease in the amount of pain that mothers in the SSC group experienced during episiotomy repair.
The use of hexagonal boron nitride quantum dots (hBN QDs) as an electrochemical sensor for ferritin is reported for the first time. These QDs were synthesized using a simple liquid exfoliation ...method. The synthesized material was characterized using analytical techniques such as UV-visible, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) to study different aspects of the QDs. These QDs were explored for their plausible application as a platform for the electrochemical detection of ferritin. For this, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used as a sensing technique and disposable hBN QD functionalized screen printed electrodes were used as a sensing platform. The developed immunosensor had a dynamic linear range from 10-2000 ng mL
of ferritin concentration with a limit of detection of 1.306 ng mL
. The immunosensor was highly selective, did not deviate in the presence of interfering agents and was also highly reproducible.
Over the last decade, organic photothermal therapy (PTT) agents have attracted increasing attention as a potential complement for, or alternative to, classical drugs and sensitizers involving ...inorganic nanomaterials. In this tutorial review, we provide a structured description of the main classes of organic photothermal agents and their characteristics. Representative agents that have been studied in the context of photothermal therapy since 2000 are summarized and recent advances in using PTT agents to address various cancers indications are highlighted.
In this paper, we introduce a notion of free cofibrations of permutative categories. We show that each cofibration of permutative categories is a retract of a free cofibration. The main goal of this ...paper is to show that the natural model category of permutative categories is a left proper model category.
There is an exponential growth in textual content generation every day in today's world. In-app messaging such as Telegram and WhatsApp, social media websites such as Instagram and Facebook, ...e-commerce websites like Amazon, Google searches, news publishing websites, and a variety of additional sources are the possible suppliers. Every instant, all these sources produce massive amounts of text data. The interpretation of such data can help business owners analyze the social outlook of their product, brand, or service and take necessary steps. The development of a consumer review summarization model using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and Long short-term memory (LSTM) to present summarized data and help businesses obtain substantial insights into their consumers' behavior and choices is the topic of this research. A hybrid approach for analyzing sentiments is presented in this paper. The process comprises pre-processing, feature extraction, and sentiment classification. Using NLP techniques, the pre-processing stage eliminates the undesirable data from input text reviews. For extracting the features effectively, a hybrid method comprising review-related features and aspect-related features has been introduced for constructing the distinctive hybrid feature vector corresponding to each review. The sentiment classification is performed using the deep learning classifier LSTM. We experimentally evaluated the proposed model using three different research datasets. The model achieves the average precision, average recall, and average F1-score of 94.46%, 91.63%, and 92.81%, respectively.
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