Sociodemographic profile and distribution of Spotted Fever cases per brazilian region between the years 2008 and 2017

This study aims to identify the clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of Spotted Fever in Brazil between 2008 and 2017. A descriptive, retrospective, cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach that used as a source of data the Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação (SINAN) available in the public database of the Departamento de Informática do Sistema Único de Saúde (DATASUS), adopting the following variables within the pre-established period: Region of Notification, Sex, Age Group, Evolution, Infection Zone, Schooling, Environment of Infection, and Confirmation Criteria. Spotted fever was prevalent in the Southeast region of the country, although underreporting is a reality in other regions. The most affected population was male, economically active, living in rural areas, and with incomplete primary education. Thus, epidemiological surveillance is fundamental, especially in endemic and "silent" regions for the notification of the disease.

A preliminary study of commercially available general-purpose chest radiography artificial intelligence-based software for detecting airspace opacity lesions in COVID-19 patients

Purpose To validate commercially available general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI)-based software for detecting airspace opacity in chest radiographs (CXRs) of COVID-19 patients. Materials and Methods We used the ieee8023-covid-chestxray-dataset to validate commercial AI software capable of detecting "Nodule/Mass" and "Airspace opacity" as regions of interest with probability scores. From this dataset, we excluded computed tomography images and CXR images taken using an anteroposterior spine view and analyzed CXR images tagged with "Pneumonia/Viral/COVID-19" and "no findings". A radiologist then reviewed the images and rated them on a 3-point opacity score for the presence of airspace opacity. The maximum probability score of airspace opacity for each image was calculated using this software. The difference in each maximum probability for each opacity score was evaluated using Wilcoxon's rank sum test. The threshold of the probability score was determined by receiver operator characteristic curve analysis for the presence or absence of COVID-19, and the true positive rate (TPR) and false positive rate (FPR) were determined for the individual and overall opacity scores. Results Images from 342 patients with COVID-19 and 15 normal images were included. Opacity scores of 1, 2, and 3 were observed in 44, 70, and 243 images, respectively, of which 33 (75%), 66 (94.2%), and 243 (100%), respectively, were from COVID-19 patients. The overall TPR and FPR were 0.82 and 0.13, respectively, at an area under the curve of 0.88 and a threshold of 0.06, while the FPR for opacity score 1 was 0.18 and the TPR for score 3 was 0.97. Conclusion Using a public database containing CXR images of COVID-19 patients, commercial AI software was shown to be able to detect airspace opacity in severe pneumonia. Summary Commercially available AI software was capable of detecting airspace opacity in CXR images of COVID-19 patients in a public database.

Effect of comorbidities and risk conditions on death from COVID-19 in migrants in Mexico

Background Comorbidities increase the risk of death for patients with COVID-19, however, little is known about how it affects the prognosis of migrants who contract the virus. Therefore, this article aims to determine which comorbidities and risk conditions are associated with the probability of death among migrants infected with COVID-19 in Mexico. Methods We use a sample of migrants with a positive diagnosis for COVID-19 (N = 2126) registered in the public database published in the National Epidemiological Surveillance System of the Mexican Ministry of Health; the technique used was a Probit regression. Results The findings show that most of the comorbidities commonly associated with death from COVID-19 in the native-born population were actually not significant when present in migrants infected with COVID-19. Additionally, migrants have lower comorbidities than locals. The results further indicate that the factors related to the death of migrants infected with COVID-19 are: age, intubation, nationality group, pneumonia and the Health Care Management of Patients. Conclusions In contrast to preceding studies with native-born populations with COVID-19, where pre-existing diseases aggravated the diagnosis of COVID-19 and sometimes led to death, in the case of migrants, only pneumonia was the significant comorbidity associated with mortality among migrants diagnosed with COVID-19.

TB-2 Patient-derived meningioma organoid model demonstrates FOXM1 dependent tumor proliferation

Recent comprehensive studies have revealed several molecular alterations that are frequently found in meningiomas. However, effective treatment reagents targeting specific molecular alterations have not yet been identified because of the limited number of representative research models of meningiomas. We established 18 organoid models comprising of two malignant meningioma cells (HKBMM and IOMM-Lee), 10 benign meningiomas, four malignant meningiomas, and two solitary fibrous tumors (SFTs). Using immunohistochemistry and molecular analyses consisting of whole exome sequencing, RNA-seq, and DNA methylation analyses, we compared the histological findings and molecular profiling of organoid models with those of parental tumors. The organoids exhibited consistent histological features and molecular profiles with those of the parental tumors. Using a public database of meningioma, we identified that upregulated forkhead box M1 (FOXM1) was correlated with increased tumor proliferation. Overexpression of FOXM1 in benign meningioma organoids increased organoid proliferation; depletion of FOXM1 in malignant organoids decreased proliferation. Additionally, thiostrepton, a FOXM1 inhibitor combined with radiation therapy, significantly inhibited proliferation of malignant meningioma organoid models (P<0.01). An organoid model for meningioma enabled us to elucidate the tumor biology of meningioma along with potent treatment targets for meningioma.

Derivation of a Novel CIHI in Patients with Lung Adenocarcinoma for Estimating Tumor Microenvironment and Clinical Prognosis

An interaction between hypoxia and immunity has been confirmed in tumor tissue. However, there is no combined biomarker for diagnosis on this basis. Therefore, we developed a scoring formula based on markers of hypoxia and immunity. Firstly, the hypoxia-immune formula of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) was derived using LASSO-Cox regression in three cohorts from public database, and the corresponding score was calculated for each patient. The formula is as follows: combined hypoxia and immune index CIHI = LDHA expression × 0.2252 + GAPDH expression × 0.0727 + ANGPTL 4 expression × 0.0724 + VEGFC expression × 0.1911 + DKK 1 expression × 0.1355 + ADM expression × 0.0588 + BTK expression × − 0.1659 . Meanwhile, patients were divided into groups according to high and low CIHI, and expression profiles of hypoxia markers and immune markers were analyzed in different groups. CIHI was used to confirm that patients with high CIHI represented a state of hypoxiahigh-immunitylow, which had worse overall survival. We also discussed the evaluation value in the immune microenvironment and clinical application of CIHI. In conclusion, this study developed and validated a hypoxia-immune formula that can guide hypoxia modifier treatment and immunotherapy in LUAD.

The effect of dobutamine in sepsis: a propensity score matched analysis

Background The use of dobutamine in patients with sepsis is questionable currently. As the benefit of dobutamine in septic patients is unclear, we aimed to evaluate whether the use of dobutamine was associated with decreased hospital mortality in sepsis patients. Methods Based on the analysis of MIMIC III public database, we performed a big-data, real world study. According to the use of dobutamine or not, patients were categorized as the dobutamine group or non dobutamine group.We used propensity score matched (PSM) analysis to adjust for confoundings. The primary outcome was hospital mortality. Results In the present study, after screening 38,605 patients, 2826 patients with sepsis were included. 121 patients were in dobutamine group and 2165 patients were in non dobutamine group. Compared with patients in non-dobutamine group, patients in dobutamine group had a lower MAP, higher HR, higher RR, higher severity of illness scores. 72 of 121 patients (59.5%) in the dobutamine group and 754 of 2165 patients (34.8%) in the non-dobutamine group died in the hospital, which resulted in a significant between-group difference (OR 1.56, 95% CI 1.01–2.40; P = 0.000). For the secondary outcomes, patients in dobutamine group received more MV use, more renal replacement therapy use, had longer ICU stay durations and more cardiac arrhythmias than those in non-dobutamine group. After adjusting for confoundings between groups by PSM analysis, hospital mortality was consistently higher in dobutamine group than that in non-dobutamine group (60.2% vs. 49.4%, OR 1.55, 95% CI 1.01–2.37; P = 0.044). Conclusions Among patients with sepsis, our study showed that the use of dobutamine was not associated with decreased hospital mortality. Further large scale, randomized controlled studies are warrented to confirm our findings.

SYDE1 Acts as an Oncogene in Glioma and has Diagnostic and Prognostic Values

Objectives: Gliomas remain one of serious public health problems worldwide which demand further and deeper investigation. The aim of this study was to explore the association between synapse defective protein 1 homolog 1 (SYDE1) and gliomas via public database analysis and in vitro validation to determine the potential diagnostic and prognostic values.Methods and Results: Compared with healthy brain tissues, there was a significant increase in SYDE1 expression in glioma tissues. Additionally, SYDE1 exhibited higher expression levels in glioma patients with unfavorable clinicopathological factors. In vitro knockdown of SYDE1 in glioma cell lines A172 inhibited their migrative and invasive ability but not the proliferative ability. GO and KEGG pathway analysis of the top 100 genes coexpressed with SYDE1 showed enrichments of tumor-associated terms. Further bioinformatic analysis revealed that the SNHG16/hsa-miR-520e/SYDE1 axis might be involved in glioma development.Conclusions:SYDE1 is expressed at higher levels in gliomas than in healthy brains, and can promote metastasis and invasion but not proliferation of gliomas. Furthermore, SYDE1 has values in the diagnosis and prognosis prediction of gliomas.

VERCASM-CPS: Vulnerability Analysis and Cyber Risk Assessment for Cyber-Physical Systems

Since Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are widely used in critical infrastructures, it is essential to protect their assets from cyber attacks to increase the level of security, safety and trustworthiness, prevent failure developments, and minimize losses. It is necessary to analyze the CPS configuration in an automatic mode to detect the most vulnerable CPS components and reconfigure or replace them promptly. In this paper, we present a methodology to determine the most secure CPS configuration by using a public database of cyber vulnerabilities to identify the most secure CPS components. We also integrate the CPS cyber risk analysis with a Controlled Moving Target Defense, which either replaces the vulnerable CPS components or re-configures the CPS to harden it, while the vulnerable components are being replaced. Our solution helps to design a more secure CPS by updating the configuration of existing CPS to make them more resilient against cyber attacks. In this paper, we will compare cyber risk scores for different CPS configurations and show that the Windows® 10 build 20H2 operating system is more secure than Linux Ubuntu® 20.04, while Red Hat® Enterprise® Linux is the most secure in some system configurations.

Macrophages M1-Related Prognostic Signature in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

A large number of studies have found that macrophages M1 play an important role in the occurrence and development of tumors. The aim of our study is to explore the causes of differential infiltration of macrophages M1 in hepatocellular carcinoma from the perspective of transcriptome and establish a prognostic model of hepatocellular carcinoma. We downloaded gene expression and clinical data from the public database, estimated the content of macrophages M1 in different samples with R software, and found the different genes between high- and low-infiltration groups. Using differentially expressed genes, we constructed a model composed of 7 genes. The risk score of the model has a good ability to predict the prognosis, has a positive correlation with immune checkpoints, and is closely related to other immune cells and immune function. Our model shows good prognostic function and has wide application value.

Genomic Features and Comparative Genomic Analysis of novel Bacillus glycinifermentans strain JRCGR-1

To the best of our knowledge, only six B. glycinifermentans sp. genome sequences are available in the public database. Here, we performed genome sequencing and comparative genomics analysis of B. glycinifermentans strain JRCGR-1. Cluster analysis of strain JRCGR-1 genes showed that 92.6% of genes were present in the orthogroups and 7.4% genes were not assigned to any group. The pangenome size was calculated at 8329 genes and presented an open genome characteristic. Phylogeny based on the pan and core genome demonstrated that all the B. glycinifermentans strains belong to the same clade. The strain JRCGR-1, ANI, TETRA and DDH values were in the range of 96.1-99.04%, 0.996-997, 73.5–84.7%, respectively. The strain JRCGR genome exhibits a high level of synteny with multiple locations in B. sonorensis sp. and B. licheniformis sp. The finding of the current study provides knowledge that facilitates a better understanding of this at the genomic level.