Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation is Associated with Lower Mechanical Ventilation and Mortality in COVID-19 Patients

Objective: Evaluate the safety and efficacy of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in preventing respiratory failure and improving survival in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Prospect of Ion Channel Inhibitors and Cholesterol Lowering Drugs to Combat COVID-19

Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and associated COVID-19 pandemic is a major global healthcare problem because there is no specific drug to combat the disease. Number of infection is piling up day by day in exponential rate creating new record every week. Entire world is looking for urgent remedy but till now there is no specific treatment available for COVID-19 patients. In this critical situation, although vaccination is in its way, drug repurposing is very important which may be useful to overcome the unprecedented situation of COVID-19 pandemic. Cholesterol lowering drugs like statin therapy may be an additional support to combat the disease. Hexamethylene amiloride which has shown its effect in blocking E protein ion channels of coronaviruses leading to inhibition of viral replication may be considered for investigative trial.

Comparison of Disease Nature of MERS, SARS-CoV-1, and SARS-CoV-2: A Review

Background: The lockdown imposed during the waves of SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19, had several consequences on nations at many levels including economic, sociocultural, health and political. The vast majority of countries have been profoundly impacted, despite the widespread of vaccination initiatives all over the countries. With lockdowns still imposed on some European and west Asian countries, it’s still unknown how long SARS-CoV-2 will carry on with its burden on society. The future is indefinite.

Bus Based Mobile Virus Diagnostic Laboratory for COVID-19 Sample Collection and Testing in Remote Areas

World Health Organization (WHO) declared Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January, 2020 and named the outbreak caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus as COVID-19. This disease is spreading globally and it is very important to take necessary measures to contain it. The rapidly spreading, highly contagious and pathogenic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is transmitted human-to-human, has continuously spread to over 200 countries. It is imperative to immediately build, expand, train and deploy health workers to find, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact.

Bayesian Model for Covid-19 to Achieve Immunity by Parsimony of Exponential Functions Minimizing the Inoculum

A ribonucleoside analog MK-4482/EIDD-2801 blocks SARS-CoV-2 transmission in ferrets and might be able to diminish transmission until vaccineinduced or naturally acquired protective herd immunity is reached [1]. As skinner pointed out, behavioral problems have to be solved through behavioral engineering [2]. Cybernetics has full application in the present condition. As in alcohol consumption, smoking, drugs, gun crimes, wars, and sexually acquired diseases, the teleological Aristotelian causes are not tobacco, drugs, and any other issue, but the aberrant behavior. The situation is not trivial and involves non-classic logic and other mathematical logics [3,4]. The neural topography corresponds to the nucleus accumbens. The latter is the battlefield, and the subject’s obsession is the rise of the neurotransmitter dopamine [3,4]. In general, people are very demanding from their governments; nevertheless, at the same time, they are deeply tolerant with their aberrant behavior promoting the dissemination of the SARSCoV-2 [4,5]. This paper examines how to deal with this problem from a scientific perspective, considering probability methods and classical and doxastic logic, using the Parsimony Principle aiming to reach immunity by minimizing the inoculum.

The Perfect Storm Review: Immune Dysregulation in Severe COVID-19 and the Possible Role of Mast Cell-Vitamin D Interactions

COVID-19 is caused by a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and has two spike subunits on the envelope of SARS-CoV-2, S1 and S2, where S1 binds to the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE-2), a receptor on the host cells and S2 binds to the cell surface membrane. Different immune responses to the virus are apparent, from asymptomatic to severe respiratory distress, organ failure and ultimately death. Immune responses without hyper-inflammation are essential to successful viral resolution. Pathological and environmental factors drive the immunological repertoire, in response to the virus, influencing innate immune cell activation, cytokine-balance and T cell differentiation. This is determined by age, comorbidity, Vitamin D status and ethnicity related factors. Homeostasis of the immune system plays an important role in the development of COVID-19 pneumonia. Mast cell activation and release of histamine is important to the cytokine driven T-cell differentiation as the adaptive response. This review combines the relative effects of UV-index-related Vitamin-D synthesis with immune status. Innate immune responses, T cell differentiation and renin/angiotensin system are different in patients affected by COVID-19 and their different outcomes are explored.

The Phenotypic and Genetic Detection of the Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Methicillin resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were identified shortly upon the introduction of methicillin into the clinical practice. The S. aureus samples were taken from patients hospitalized in General Hospital of Chania “Agios Georgios”. The strains were isolated from different pathological products, in the hospital laboratory. All isolates were tested using the cefoxitin disk diffusion, the oxacillin MIC methods and the PBP2’ latex agglutination test (bioMérieux), for the production of the Penicillin-Binding Protein 2a (PBP2a or PBP2’ protein). S. aureus ATCC 29213 was used as a negative control. We followed the detection of the mecA gene throughout the PCR method, as the standard “gold” method, in order to identify MRSA strains. Conventional methods for MRSA strains detection were compared with the PCR method. The antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed throughout the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method using antibiotic discs from Bioanalyse ltd. The mecA gene was found by PCR in 57.5 % of S. aureus strains, which allowed defining the isolated strains as MRSA strains. According to the oxacillin MIC values of the studied strains, 25 strains (53.2%) were identified as MRSA, 21 (44.68%) as MSSA and 1*strain (2.13%) as Borderline (BL) MRSA. The mecA gene is present in 24 of the MRSA strains with oxacillin MIC ≥ 4 being more common in strains showing the oxacillin MICs ≥ 256 (12/27). Adding the BL strains to the methicillin resistant strains, the rate of the MRSA strains increases to 26 (55.32%), the appropriate values of the MRSA strains percent, as determined by the PCR method (57.45%), which shows a concordance of 96.3% (26/27), between the results obtained by the two tests. Comparing the results obtained using the PCR method; with the oxacillin MICs and the PBP2’ latex agglutination test, concordant results were obtained for 89.36% of the strains (42/47) by oxacillin MICs and for 97.87% of the strains (46/47) by PBP2’ latex agglutination test. We conclude that the specificity of these methods is 100% for the mecA PCR method, 97.87% for the PBP2a latex method and 89.36% for the oxacillin MIC. The comparison of phenotypic methods (the PBP2a latex reaction, oxacillin MICs, the Cefoxitin disk diffusion test with the genotypic methods (the presence of the mecA gene), reveals that the PBP2a latex reaction has high sensitivity (97.87%), and can be used as an alternative method to PCR for the MRSA detection, in resource constraint settings.