scholarly journals Convalescent Plasma Therapy: a Possible Treatment of COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-47
Author(s):  
Shubha Devi Sapkota ◽  
Monika Sharma ◽  
Gehendra Bhusal
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Alternative Therapy ◽  
Lung Damage ◽  
Plasma Therapy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Severe Infections

COVID 19 is a newly recognized infectious disease that has rapidly spread with no verified treatment available. It is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2). In Convalescent plasma therapy, the yellowish liquid or the plasma from the recovered blood is used to treat the patient suffering from the same illness. For more than 100 years it has been used to treat severe infections with varying degrees of success. For this present infection, multiple clinical trials on plasma therapy are still under vigorous investigations. Despite the very low chance of risks like allergies, lung damage, and transmission of blood-related infection, the therapy has shown a positive result in the recovery of the patients. Many experts are observing its use as a “stopgap measure” until effective vaccines and antiviral drugs are available in a wide range. However, the main challenges faced are finding suitable donors, its expensiveness in the whole procedure, and inability to perform on a large scale. In this commentary, summarization of the convalescent plasma therapy is done as a hopeful alternative therapy of severe or critical COVID 19. It has also emphasized the promising results shown since the past while the use of this therapy in various infectious diseases.

scholarly journals How I treat pediatric venous thromboembolism

Blood ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 130 (12) ◽  
pp. 1402-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Young
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Venous Thromboembolism ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Central Venous Catheters ◽  
Rare Disorder ◽  
Central Venous ◽  
Management Decisions ◽  
Logical Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Medical Disorders

Abstract The incidence of pediatric venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been increasing significantly over the past decade in part as a result of increased recognition of this serious disorder but more so because of the increased use of central venous catheters and other technological advancements involved in the care of ill children. Management of pediatric VTE is a complex undertaking, considering that the vast majority of children who develop this complication have serious underlying medical disorders. Although the incidence is rising, in comparison with adults, this remains a relatively rare disorder, and as such, large-scale clinical trials have not been completed, rendering management decisions to be based on extrapolation from adult data and the experience of the treating physician. Clearly, both are fraught with problems. Thus, day-to-day management remains more art than science until such time that the results from clinical trials (many of which are under way) become available. This edition of “How I Treat” describes the author’s experience in managing 3 common scenarios that one may encounter in pediatric thrombosis and suggests a logical approach to such situations. Furthermore, the author provides 3 algorithms to help guide management decisions.

scholarly journals COVID-19 and rheumatology: A year later

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
B. S. Belov ◽  
A. M. Lila
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
General Population ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Inflammatory Diseases ◽  
Controlled Clinical Trials ◽  
Antirheumatic Drugs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immune Mediated ◽  
Great Hope ◽  
Blind Spots

An enormous body of evidence on various aspects of the coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19 associated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2) has been accumulated over the past year. Meanwhile, investigated relationship between COVID-19 and rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) and certain identified similarities were of paramount importance. It was shown that the incidence of COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic diseases does not significantly differ from that in general population. The risk of severe course and unfavorable COVID-19 outcomes in patients with rheumatic IMIDs is significantly associated with older age and comorbidities – as in general population, and is not aggravated by preceding use of the majority of antirheumatic drugs. Gaining better insights into pathogenesis of COVID-19 provided sound prerequisites for anti-rheumatic drugs repurposing and substantiated their use for treatment of COVID-19 infection. Under current COVID-19 pandemic circumstances, accelerated development and invention of various COVID-19 vaccines offers a great hope to curb the tide of pandemic. However, the efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety of these vaccines in patients with rheumatic IMIDs must be studied in controlled clinical trials. Generally speaking, there are still numerous blind spots in our knowledge of rheumatological aspects of such a versatile and polymorphous condition as COVID-19 infection.

scholarly journals Improved gene co-expression network quality through expression dataset down-sampling and network aggregation

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Liesecke ◽  
Johan-Owen De Craene ◽  
Sébastien Besseau ◽  
Vincent Courdavault ◽  
Marc Clastre ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Expression Profiles ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Network Construction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Gene Associations ◽  
New Gene ◽  
Network Quality

Abstract Large-scale gene co-expression networks are an effective methodology to analyze sets of co-expressed genes and discover new gene functions or associations. Distances between genes are estimated according to their expression profiles and are visualized in networks that may be further partitioned to reveal communities of co-expressed genes. Creating expression profiles is now eased by the large amounts of publicly available expression data (microarrays and RNA-seq). Although many distance calculation methods have been intensively compared and reviewed in the past, it is unclear how to proceed when many samples reflecting a wide range of different conditions are available. Should as many samples as possible be integrated into network construction or be partitioned into smaller sets of more related samples? Previous studies have indicated a saturation in network performances to capture known associations once a certain number of samples is included in distance calculations. Here, we examined the influence of sample size on co-expression network construction using microarray and RNA-seq expression data from three plant species. We tested different down-sampling methods and compared network performances in recovering known gene associations to networks obtained from full datasets. We further examined how aggregating networks may help increase this performance by testing six aggregation methods.

A Study on the Establishment of Criteria for Reduction measures of Mega Drought in Korea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Park MooJong ◽  
Song Youngseok ◽  
Lee Heesup ◽  
Park Juhyeok
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Response ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Technology Development ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Severity Index ◽  
Moisture Index ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Drought Damage

<p>Recently, climate change due to global warming has been frequented by large-scale weather disasters that have not been experienced in the past. Among various weather disasters, drought is one of the representative weather disasters in Korea recently along with heavy rains. In the case of drought, it occurs in a wide range in the short term and long term, and it is difficult to identify specific occurrence times, places, and causes, and damage and influence are enormous.</p><p>In the past, the Republic of Korea has been prepared with non-structural measures such as securing irrigation water for drought restoration, developing emergency management, and developing a drought information system based on drought index. The reduction measures for drought degradation were mainly used by Palmer Draught Severity Index (PDSI), Standardized Precision Index (SPI), Crop Moisture Index (CMI), Crop Specific Drug Index (CMI), and Profication (DICS Index), and Survey.</p><p>In this study, we intend to establish standards for reducing drought damage by investigating and analyzing drought damage characteristics in Korea. In the past, drought damage in Korea occurred in agriculture, living and industry, and the ministry manages and stores the data on drought damage. The drought damage in South Korea from 1965 to 2018 occurred a total of 204 times, mostly in South Gyeongsang and South Jeolla provinces, rather than in special cities and metropolitan cities. The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of drought damage in Korea and establish the measures to reduce mega drought.</p><p>Acknowledges : This research was supported by a grant(2019-MOIS31-010) from Fundamental Technology Development Program for Extreme Disaster Response funded by Korean Ministry of Interior and Safety(MOIS).</p>

scholarly journals Semi-third-day fever in view of modern medicine

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 192-194
Author(s):  
Marina G. Avdeeva
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Clinical Observation ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Differential Diagnostics ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Acute Infectious Disease ◽  
Diagnostic Capabilities

It is difficult for a modern doctor who relies on a wide range of laboratory diagnostic capabilities to imagine the path of mistakes, insights and delusions traveled by doctors of the past. How exactly through clinical observation the disease was observed. The archival article Half-tree-day fever published in the journal is an example of a clinical and epidemic description of an outbreak of an acute infectious disease, the etiology of which remains unknown. The more interesting are the distinguishing issues of differential diagnostics.

scholarly journals Role of Anti-Viral Drugs in Combating SARS-CoV-2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sweta Kamboj ◽  
Rohit Kamboj ◽  
Shikha Kamboj ◽  
Rohit Dutt ◽  
Reeva Chabbra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Herpes Simplex ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Influenza A ◽  
Antiviral Drugs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Pox ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Novel Virus

Viruses are the eventual assertion of parasitism, they not only take nutriments from the host cell, apart from that they direct its metabolic machinery to amalgamate novel virus particle and to diminish the ability of flu viruses to reproduce in an individual antiviral drugs are used. When used as directed, antiviral drugs may help to lessen the duration of flu symptoms and may reduce the severity of common flu symptoms. Antiviral drugs are the class of drugs which comes under the antimicrobials, and that also accommodates the larger group i.e. of antibiotics. They are broad-spectrum in nature and can be effective against a wide range of viruses. They can be used as a single drug as well as in combination of drugs. Antiviral drugs are dissimilar from the antibiotics, they do not demolish their target pathogen ideally they obstruct development of pathogen. To the greatest extent antiviral drugs currently accessible are delineate to deal with herpes viruses, covid-19, HIV, the hepatitis b and c viruses herpes simplex, small pox, picornavirus and influenza a and b viruses etc. Scientists are searching to drag out the range of antiviral to the other families of pathogens. They mainly act by inhibiting the attachment of viruses on cells, prevent genetic reproduction of virus, prevent viral protein production and vital for production of virus. The emanation of antiviral is generally the outcome about an appreciably expanded skills or proficiency of the generative, microscopic and atomic activity of organisms, allowing biomedical analyst to acknowledge the structure, mechanism of action and activity of viruses, significant progress within the procedure for come across the current drugs. Coronavirus 2019 (COVID 19) is highly infectious disease triggered by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus 2 causing nearly 2.9 million deaths worldwide. With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the repurposing of antiviral drugs has come into picture.

scholarly journals Effect of antihypertensive drug treatment on long-term blood pressure reduction: An individual patient-level data meta-analysis of 352,744 Participants from 51 large-scale randomised clinical trials

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Antihypertensive Treatment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACTObjectivesEvidence from randomised trials on long-term blood pressure (BP) reduction from pharmacologic treatment is limited. To investigate the effects of antihypertensive drugs on long-term BP change and examine its variation over time and among people with different clinical characteristicsDesignIndividual participant-level data meta-analysisSetting and data sourceThe Blood Pressure Lowering Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration involving 51 large-scale long-term randomised clinical trialsParticipants352,744 people (42% women) with mean age of 65 years and mean baseline systolic/diastolic BP of 152/87 mmHg, of whom 18% were current smokers, 50% had cardiovascular disease, 29% had diabetes, and 72% were taking antihypertensive treatment at baselineInterventionPharmacological BP-lowering treatmentOutcomeDifference in longitudinal changes in systolic and diastolic BP between randomised treatment arms over an average follow-up of four yearsResultDrugs were effective in lowering BP, with the maximum effect becoming apparent after 12-month follow-up and with gradual attenuation towards later years. Based on measures taken ≥12 months post-randomisation, more intense BP-lowering treatment reduced systolic/diastolic BP (95% confidence interval) by −11.2 (−11.4 to −11.0)/−5.6 (−5.8 to −5.5) mmHg than less intense treatment; active treatment by −5.1 (−5.3 to −5.0)/−2.3 (−2.4 to −2.2) mmHg lower than placebo, and active arm by −1.4 (−1.5 to −1.3)/−0.6 (−0.7 to −0.6) mmHg lower than the control arm for drug class comparison trials. BP reductions were consistently observed across a wide range of baseline BP values and ages, and by sex, history of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and prior antihypertensive treatment use.ConclusionPharmacological agents were effective in lowering long-term BP among individuals with a wide range of characteristics, but the net between-group reductions were modest, which is partly attributable to the intended trial goals.

COVID-19 Vaccines: Adenoviral Vectors

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Jacob-Dolan ◽  
Dan H. Barouch
Keyword(s):  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
Prevention And Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Adenoviral Vectors ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Vaccine Platform ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Control

The worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has led to the unprecedented pace of development of multiple vaccines. This review evaluates how adenovirus (Ad) vector platforms have been leveraged in response to this pandemic. Ad vectors have been used in the past for vaccines against other viruses, most notably HIV and Ebola, but they never have been produced, distributed, or administered to humans at such a large scale. Several different serotypes of Ads encoding SARS-CoV-2 Spike have been tested and found to be efficacious against COVID-19. As vaccine rollouts continue and the number of people receiving these vaccines increases, we will continue to learn about this vaccine platform for COVID-19 prevention and control. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Medicine, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals A new golden age: testing general relativity with cosmology

2011 ◽  
Vol 369 (1957) ◽  
pp. 4941-4946
Author(s):  
Rachel Bean ◽  
Pedro G. Ferreira ◽  
Andy Taylor
Keyword(s):  
General Relativity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Large Scale Structure ◽  
Einstein Gravity ◽  
Field Equations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cosmological Observations ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Theories Of Gravity ◽  
The Universe

Gravity drives the evolution of the Universe and is at the heart of its complexity. Einstein's field equations can be used to work out the detailed dynamics of space and time and to calculate the emergence of large-scale structure in the distribution of galaxies and radiation. Over the past few years, it has become clear that cosmological observations can be used not only to constrain different world models within the context of Einstein gravity but also to constrain the theory of gravity itself. In this article, we look at different aspects of this new field in which cosmology is used to test theories of gravity with a wide range of observations.

scholarly journals Clinical Trials: New Developments

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 443-443
Author(s):  
Louis-Philippe Boulet
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Respiratory Health ◽  
Collaborative Activity ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Projects

Canadian respiratory health research is recognized as being among the best worldwide. Many Canadian researchers are leaders in international projects, including large scale clinical trials. There is, however, a need to develop a structure that could foster the collaboration of Canadian investigators in joint projects of this sort. In the past few years, discussions have taken place on what could be a Canadian Thoracic Society (CTS) Clinical Trials Group. This is a wonderful opportunity to put forward such an initiative, in the context of the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), where this type of collaborative activity fits quite well with the goals of this new institution.

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