The Severity of COVID-19 and Its Determinants: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis in China

To analyse the prevalence of severe and critical COVID-19 cases and its determinants, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted using Review Manager. Four English and two Chinese databases were used to identify and explore the relationships between the severity of COVID-19 and its determinants, with no restrictions on publication date. The odds ratio and 95% CI were combined to assess the influencing level of all factors. Twenty-three articles containing a total of 15,828 cases of COVID-19 were included in this systematic review. The prevalence of severe and critical COVID-19 cases was 17.84% and 4.9%, respectively. A total of 148 factors were identified, which included behavioural, symptom, comorbidity, laboratory, radiographic, exposure, and other factors. Among them, 35 factors could be included in the meta-analysis. Specifically, for example, the male (OR 1.55, 95% CI 1.42–1.69) and elderly (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.03–1.10) populations tended to experience severe and critical illness. Patients with cough, dyspnea, fatigue, fever, and gastrointestinal symptoms could have severe and critical diseases. Regarding laboratory results, albumin, aspartate aminotransferase, creatinine, D-dimer, fibrinogen, neutrophils, procalcitonin, platelets, and respiratory rate were potential factors that could be used to predict the severity of COVID.

A feasibility trial of a cognitive-behavioural symptom management program for chronic pelvic pain for men with refractory chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome

Background: Our objective was to determine the feasibility of acognitive behavioural symptom management program for the acuteimprovement of psychosocial risk factors of diminished quality oflife (QoL) in men suffering from chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvicpain syndrome (CP/CPPS).Materials and Methods: We assessed CP/CPPS symptoms andimpact (i.e., chronic prostatitis symptom index [CPSI] pain, urinary,QoL domains), psychosocial risk factors were assessed at baselineand weekly for 8 weeks. We included the following psychosocialrisk factors: catastrophizing (Pain Catastrophizing Scale, PCS),mood (Center for Epidemiological Studies in Depression Scale,CES-D), social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived SocialSupport, MSPSS) and general pain (McGill Pain Questionnaire).Patient sessions dispute and replace pessimistic thinking withhealth-focused thinking and behaviour.Results: Eleven men completed the psychosocial management program(mean age = 51.3, standard deviaton [SD] = 12.49). MeanCPSI baseline total score was 25.2 (SD = 10.21). Repeated measuresANOVAs showed the program was associated with significantlinear reductions for pain (p = 0.051), disability (p= 0.020)and catastrophizing (p = 0.005), but no changes in depressivesymptoms or social support. The CPSI baseline scores comparedto follow-up scores (n = 8) were significantly reduced (p = 0.007),with CPSI pain (p = 0.015) and QoL impact (p = 0.013) reduced,but not for urinary scores. Correlations between change scores atthe baseline and at 8 weeks for CPSI and psychosocial risk factorsindicated that reductions in catastrophizing were most stronglyassociated with score reductions for the CPSI; these reductions,however, were not significant.Conclusions: The psychosocial management program targets andsignificantly reduces several empirically supported psychosocialrisk factors associated with poorer CP/CPPS outcomes. Psychosocialmanagement for CP/CPPS is feasible, but requires a randomizedcontrolled trial with longitudinal follow-up.

The Prediction of Rehabilitative Success after Three Years the use of Social, Symptom and Cognitive Variables

A three-year follow-up study of 49 psychiatric patients, representative of those found in long-stay care, tested whether behavioural, symptom and demographic variables as well as response-processing difficulties could predict levels of psychiatric care. The researchers were blind to the criteria for allocating patients to particular forms of care and the staff responsible for care had no access to information collected by the research team. Not only was it possible, using only these few factors, to predict the form of care, but one factor, response processing, was related to whether patients moved to more independent forms of psychiatric care.