bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Cardiology Services
Authors: Fersia Omar , Bryant Sue , Nicholson Rachael , McMeeken Karen , Brown Carolyn , Donaldson Brenda , Jardine Aaron , Grierson Valerie , Whalen Vanessa , Mackay Alistair 
Published: June 2020

AbstractObjectiveCOVID-19 pandemic resulted in prioritisation of NHS resources to cope with the surge in infected patients. However, there have been no studies in the UK looking at the effect of COVID-19 work pattern on the provision of cardiology services. We aim to assess the impact of the pandemic on the cardiology services and clinical activity.MethodsWe analysed key performance indicators in cardiology services in a single centre in the UK in the intervals prior and during the lockdown to assess for reduction or changes to service provisions.ResultsThere has been more than 50% drop in patients presenting to cardiology and those diagnosed with myocardial infarction. All cardiology service provisions sustained significant reductions which included outpatient clinics, investigations, procedures and cardiology community services such as heart failure and cardiac rehabilitation.ConclusionAs ischaemic heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death nationally and globally, cardiology services need to prepare for a significant increase in workload in the recovery phase and develop new pathways to urgently help those adversely affected by the changes in service provisions.Key QuestionsWhat is already known about this subject?COVID-19 affected the way healthcare is delivered through restructuring and prioritisation of resources. It is therefore expected that COVID-19 work pattern will have an impact on the delivery of medical and surgical services. Quantifying this effect is necessary to plan on how to deal with COVID-19 sequelae in the recovery phase.What does this study add?As ischaemic heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the world, assessing the direct and indirect effect of COVID-19 on cardiology through COVID-19 related cardiac diseases and through the restriction of cardiology provisions is necessary to plan our services in the post COVID-19 era.How might this impact on clinical practice?The impact of COVID-19 will be felt beyond the direct effect of COVID-19 related cardiac diseases. The provisions of cardiac services were severely restricted due to a shift in the focus in dealing with the surge of patients with COVID-19 and patients’ reluctance to seek medical help during the lockdown period. There was therefore a reduction across all cardiology performance indicators from referrals to investigations, diagnoses and management of cardiology patients. It is therefore expected that there will be another surge of patients seeking cardiology care and that services need to plan to treat these patients early and urgently to prevent any long term complications.
Two New Improved Methods for Determination of Cobb’s Angle of Scoliosis
Authors: Hellen Dietrich W. , Teusner Michael 
Published: June 2020

AbstractCobb’s traditional method for measuring the angle of scoliosis is complicated and error-prone in application. Angles measured with this method are inaccurate and it therefore stands to reason to search for improved procedures.We propose Cobb’s angle to be determined by two novel methods: the distance method and the two-angle method. Using mathematical error analysis and experimental test measurings we demonstrate that the two proposed methods offer significant advantages over the current standard. They simplify the measurement process and increase outcome accuracy.For Cobb’s angles larger than 30 degrees, the two-angle method reduces the error-variation by approx. 25%. For Cobb’s angles below 30 degrees the distance method reduces the error-variation by approx. 50%.
Symptom clusters in Covid19: A potential clinical prediction tool from the COVID Symptom study app
Authors: Sudre Carole H. , Lee Karla A. , Lochlainn Mary Ni , Varsavsky Thomas , Murray Benjamin , Graham Mark S. , Menni Cristina , Modat Marc , Bowyer Ruth C E , Nguyen Long H. , Drew David A. , Joshi Amit D. , Ma Wenjie , Guo Chuan-Guo , Lo Chun-Han , Ganesh Sajaysurya , Buwe Abubakar , Pujol Joan Capdevila , du Cadet Julien Lavigne , Visconti Alessia , Freidin Maxim B , El-Sayed Moustafa Julia S. , Falchi Mario , Davies Richard , Gomez Maria F. , Fall Tove , Cardoso M. Jorge , Wolf Jonathan , Franks Paul W. , Chan Andrew T. , Spector Tim D. , Steves Claire J , Ourselin Sébastien 
Published: June 2020

AbstractAs no one symptom can predict disease severity or the need for dedicated medical support in COVID-19, we asked if documenting symptom time series over the first few days informs outcome. Unsupervised time series clustering over symptom presentation was performed on data collected from a training dataset of completed cases enlisted early from the COVID Symptom Study Smartphone application, yielding six distinct symptom presentations. Clustering was validated on an independent replication dataset between May 1-May 28th, 2020. Using the first 5 days of symptom logging, the ROC-AUC of need for respiratory support was 78.8%, substantially outperforming personal characteristics alone (ROC-AUC 69.5%). Such an approach could be used to monitor at-risk patients and predict medical resource requirements days before they are required.One sentence summaryLongitudinal clustering of symptoms can predict the need for respiratory support in severe COVID-19.
Increased plasma heparanase activity in COVID-19 patients
Authors: Buijsers Baranca , Yanginlar Cansu , Nooijer Aline de , Grondman Inge , Maciej-Hulme Marissa L. , Jonkman Inge , Janssen Nico A.F. , Rother Nils , de Graaf Mark , Pickkers Peter , Kox Matthijs , Joosten Leo A.B. , Nijenhuis Tom , Netea Mihai G. , Hilbrands Luuk , van de Veerdonk Frank L. , Duivenvoorden Raphaël , de Mast Quirijn , van der Vlag Johan 
Published: June 2020

AbstractReports suggest a role of endothelial dysfunction and loss of endothelial barrier function in COVID-19. It is well established that the endothelial glycocalyx-degrading enzyme heparanase contributes to vascular leakage and inflammation. Low molecular weight heparins (LMWH) serve as an inhibitor of heparanase. We hypothesize that heparanase contributes to the pathogenesis of COVID-19, and that heparanase may be inhibited by LMWH. Heparanase activity and heparan sulfate levels were measured in plasma of healthy controls (n=10) and COVID-19 patients (n=48).Plasma heparanase activity and heparan sulfate levels were significantly elevated in COVID-19 patients. Heparanase activity associated with disease severity including the need for intensive care and mechanical ventilation, lactate dehydrogenase levels and creatinine levels. Use of prophylactic LMWH in non-ICU patients was associated with a reduced heparanase activity. Since there is no other clinically applied heparanase inhibitor currently available, therapeutic treatment of COVID-19 patients with low molecular weight heparins should be explored.
Spreading Analysis of COVID-19 Epidemic in Bangladesh by Dynamical Mathematical Modelling
Authors: Fargana A , Arifutzzaman A , Rakhimov A A 
Published: June 2020

AbstractThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which emerged from Wuhan, China, is now a pandemic, affecting across the globe. Bangladesh also is experiencing the rapid growth of COVID-19 infection and death cases started from 8th March 2020. The purpose of providing a simple yet effective explanatory model for prediction of the future evolution of the contagion and verification of the effectiveness of the containment and lockdown measures in Bangladesh. In this study, using a modified SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) model a forecast is generated to predict the trends of COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh. The epidemic model was proposed to accommodate the effects of lockdown and individual based precautionary measures. Data has been taken and analyzed for before and after the movement control order (MCO) and during the MCO period. Modified SIR model in this work offers us an idea how the outbreak would progress based on the current data. It also has estimated that, the peak in terms of the number of infected cases will start from last of June 2020. For the total population (100%) the model gets the peaks at 214875 (infected cases) and 7743 (death cases). For the 90% population, the model shows the peaks at 244356 (infected cases) and 9100 (death cases). Analysis revealed that the lockdown and recommended individual hygiene can slow down the outbreak but unable to eradicate the disease from the society. With the current infection and death rate and existing level of personal precautionary the number of infected individuals will be increasing.
Neutrophil nuclear patterns to distinguish between pathological and non-pathological autoantibodies detected on HEp-2 cells
Authors: Won Dong Il , Park Jihea , Kim Beom Soo , Kim Chae Eun , Yoon Heon Sik , Jung Ji Soo 
Published: June 2020

AbstractBackgroundAntinuclear antibody (ANA) testing is used to diagnose systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease (SARD). Autoantibodies (Abs) associated with the “homogeneous-like” pattern on ANA HEp-2 cell nuclei can be classified as pathological (e.g., anti-dsDNA, anti-nucleosome, anti-histone, anti-Scl-70 Abs) or non-pathological (e.g., anti-DFS70 Abs).MethodsAnti-neutrophil cytoplasmic anti-antibody (ANCA) testing was used to classify individuals who presented with a homogeneous-like pattern on ANA testing. Enrolled subjects included (1) young individuals with a dense fine speckled pattern on ANA testing (young non-SARD group, n = 62) and patients with (2) systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) with anti-dsDNA Abs (SLE group, n = 33), (3) rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with anti-nucleosome, anti-histone Abs, and others (RA group, n = 45), and (4) diffuse systemic sclerosis (SSc) with Scl-70 Abs (diffuse SSc group, n = 11).ResultsNegative rates (95% confidence interval) of neutrophil nuclear patterns on ANCA testing were: 96.8% (88.8%–99.6%) of the young non-SARD group, 3.0% (0.1 %–15.8%) of the SLE group, 4.4% (0.5%–15.2%) of the RA group, and 54.5% (23.4%–83.3%) of the diffuse SSc group. The negative rate of the non-SARD group was significantly higher than those of the SARD group (all P < 0.05).ConclusionsANCA testing helps to identify individuals with non-pathological anti-DFS70 Abs who present with homogeneous-like patterns in HEp-2 cell nuclei on ANA testing.
Compassionate Use of Tocilizumab in Severe SARS-CoV2 Pneumonia. When late administration is too late
Authors: Hernández-Mora Miguel Górgolas , Úbeda Alfonso Cabello , Pérez Laura Prieto , Álvarez Felipe Villar , Álvarez Beatriz Álvarez , Rodríguez Nieto María Jesús , Acosta Irene Carrillo , Fernández Ormaechea Itziar , Mohammed Al-Hayani Aws Waleed , Carballosa Pilar , Martínez Silvia Calpena , Ezzine Farah , González Marina Castellanos , Naya Alba , de las Heras Marta López , Rodríguez Guzmán Marcel José , Guijarro Ana Cordero , Lavado Antonio Broncano , Valcayo Alicia Macías , García Marta Martín , Martínez Javier Bécares , Roblas Ricardo Fernández , Piris Pinilla Miguel Ángel , Alen José Fortes , Pernaute Olga Sánchez , Bueno Fredeswinda Romero , Frades Sarah Heili , Barba Romero Germán Peces ,   the COVID-FJD-TEAM
Published: June 2020

SummaryIntroductionTocilizumab is an interleukin 6 receptor antagonist which has been used for the treatment of severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia (SSP), aiming to ameliorate the cytokine release syndrome (CRS) -induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, there is no data about the best moment for its administration along the course of the disease.MethodsWe provided tocilizumab on a compassionate-use basis to patients with SSP hospitalized (excluding intensive care and intubated cases) who required oxygen support to have a saturation >93%. Primary endpoint was intubation or death after 24 hours of its administration. Patients received at least one dose of 400 mg intravenous tocilizumab during March 8-2020, through April 20-2020.FindingsA total of 207 patients were studied and 186 analysed. The mean age was 65 years and 68% were male. A co-existing condition was present in 68 % of cases. At baseline, 114 (61%) required oxygen support with FiO2 >0.5 % and 72 (39%) ≤0.5%. Early administration of tocilizumab, when the need of oxygen support was still below FiO2 ≤0.5%, was significantly more effective than given it in advanced stages (FiO2 >0.5 %), achieving lower rates of intubation or death (13% vs 37% repectively, p<0·001).InterpretationThe benefit of tocilizumab in severe SARS-Cov-2 pneumonia is only expected when it is administrated before the need of high oxygen support.FundingNone.
Impact Of Temperature and Sunshine Duration on Daily New Cases and Death due to COVID-19
Authors: Thangariyal Swati , Rastogi Aayushi , Tomar Arvind , Bhadoria Ajeet , Baweja Sukriti 
Published: June 2020

AbstractBackgroundThe coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) control has now become a critical issue for public health. Many ecological factors are proven to influence the transmission and survival of the virus. In this study, we aim to determine the association of different climate factors with the spread and mortality due to COVID-19.MethodsThe climate indicators included in the study were duration of sunshine, average minimum temperature and average maximum temperature, with cumulative confirmed cases, deceased and recovered cases. The data was performed for 138 different countries of the world, between January 2020 to May 2020. Both univariate and multivariate was performed for cumulative and month-wise analysis using SPSS software.ResultsThe average maximum temperature, and sunshine duration was significantly associated with COVID-19 confirmed cases, deceased and recovered. For every one degree increase in mean average temperature, the confirmed, deceased and recovered cases decreased by 2047(p=0.03), 157(p=0.016), 743 (p=0.005) individuals. The association remained significant even after adjusting for environmental such as sunshine duration as well as non-environmental variables. Average sunshine duration was inveserly correlated with increase in daily new cases (ρ= -2261) and deaths (ρ= -0.2985).ConclusionHigher average temperature and longer sunshine duration was strongly associated with COVID-19 cases and deaths in 138 countries. Hence the temperature is an important factor in SARS CoV-2 survival and this study will help in formulating better preventive measures to combat COVID-19 based on their climatic conditions.
Are health indicators able to describe the ability to cope of Health Systems with COVID-19 epidemic?
Authors: Castaldi Silvana , Luconi Ester , Rivieccio Bruno Alessandro , Boracchi Patrizia , Marano Giuseppe , Pariani Elena , Romanò Luisa , Auxilia Francesco , Nicolussi Federica , Micheletti Alessandra , Manzi Giancarlo , Salini Silvia , Galli Massimo , Biganzoli Elia 
Published: June 2020

AbstractThe Coronavirus Disease 19 epidemic is an infectious disease which was declared as a pandemic and hit all the Countries, all over the world, from the beginning of the year 2020.Despite the emergency vigilance plans, in all the Countries, Health Systems experienced a different ratio of lethality, admissions to intensive care units and managing quarantine of positive patients.The aim of this study is to investigate if some health indicators might have been useful to understand the capacity of Italian National Health Service to manage the COVID 19 epidemic.We will compare data in two different Italian regions in the Northern part of Italy (Lombardy and Veneto) with the national data to understand if different health strategies might be significant to explain different patterns of COVID 19 epidemic in Italy.The two regions have two different health policies to face CoViD-2019 epidemic.To face epidemic like this one the answer should be outside hospitals but this means to have general practitioners well-trained and enough healthcare personnel working outside hospitals.
Simulation of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on COVID-19 with an Agent-based Model of Zonal Restraint
Authors: Álvarez Lindsay , Rojas-Galeano Sergio 
Published: June 2020

AbstractNon-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) are currently the only mechanism governments can use to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. Similarly to the actual spread of the disease, the dynamics of the contention patterns emerging from the application of NPIs are complex and depend on interactions between people within a specific region as well as other stochastic factors associated to demographic, geographic, political and economical conditions. Agent-based models simulate microscopic rules of simultaneous spatial interactions between multiple agents within a population, in an attempt to reproduce the complex dynamics of the effect of the contention measures. In this way, it is possible to design individual behaviours along with NPI scenarios, measuring how the simulation dynamics is affected and therefore, yielding rapid insights to perform a broad assessment of the potential of composite interventions at different stages of the epidemic. In this paper we describe a model and a tool to experiment with such kind of analysis applied to a conceptual city, considering a number of widely-applied NPIs such as social distancing, case isolation, home quarantine, total lockdown, sentinel testing, mask wearing and a distinctive “zonal” enforcement measure, requiring these interventions to be applied gradually to separated enclosed districts (zones). We find that the model is able to capture emerging dynamics associated to these NPIs; besides, the zonal contention strategy yields an improvement on the mitigation impact across all scenarios of combination with individual NPIs. The model and tool are open to extensions to account for omitted or newer factors affecting the planning and design of NPIs intended to counter the late stages or forthcoming waves of the COVID-19 crisis.
Is tracking and modeling Covid-19 infection dynamics for Bangladesh using daily data feasible?
Authors: Ahsan Karar Zunaid , Ijdi Rashida E , Streatfield Peter Kim 
Published: June 2020

AbstractGiven the low Covid-19 testing coverage in the country, this study tested whether the daily change in the number of new Covid-19 cases is due to increase (or decrease) in the number of tests done daily. We performed Granger causality test based on vector autoregressive models on Bangladesh’s case and test numbers between 8 March and 5 June 2020, using publicly available data. The test results show that the daily number of tests Granger-cause the number of new cases (p <0.001), meaning the daily number of new cases is perhaps due to an increase in test capacity rather than a change in the infection rates. From the results of this test we can infer that if the number of daily tests does not increase substantially, data on new infections will not give much information for understanding covid-19 infection dynamics in Bangladesh.
Classifications of Breast Cancer Images by Deep Learning
Authors: Liu Wenzhong , Li Hualan , Hua Caijian , Zhao Liangjun 
Published: June 2020

AbstractBackgroundBreast cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death in women. Classifications of pathological images are important for its diagnosis and prognosis. However, the existing computational methods can sometimes hardly meet the accuracy requirement of clinical applications, due to uneven color distribution and subtle difference in features.MethodsIn this study, a novel classification method DeepBC was proposed for classifying the pathological images of breast cancer, based on the deep convolution neural networks. DeepBC integrated Inception, ResNet, and AlexNet, extracted features from images, and classified images of benign and malignant tissues.ResultsAdditionally, complex tests were performed on the existing benchmark dataset to evaluate the performance of DeepBC. The evaluation results showed that, DeepBC achieved 92% and 96.43% accuracy rates in classifying patients and images, respectively, with the F1-score of 97.38%, which better than the state-of-the-art methods.ConclusionsThese findings indicated that, the model had favorable robustness and generalization, and was advantageous in the clinical classifications of breast cancer.
Differential cellular responses to adhesive interactions with galectin-8 and fibronectin coated substrates
Authors: Li Wenhong , Sancho Ana , Groll Jürgen , Zick Yehiel , Bershadsky Alexander , Geiger Benjamin 
Published: June 2020

AbstractThe mechanisms underlying the cellular response to extracellular matrices (ECM), consisting of multiple adhesive ligands, each with distinct properties, are still poorly understood. Here we address this topic by monitoring the cellular responses to two very different extracellular adhesion molecules – fibronectin and galectin-8 – and to mixtures of the two. Fibronectin is one of the major integrin ligands, inducing cell spreading and development of focal adhesions associated with contractile stress fibers. Galectin-8 is a mammalian lectin, which specifically binds to β-galactoside residues present on some integrins, as well as to other cell surface receptors. We found marked differences in HeLa-JW cell spreading, assembly of focal adhesions and actomyosin stress fibers, and formation of adherent filopodia, on rigid flat substrates functionalized by fibronectin or galectin-8 alone, or by mixtures of these two proteins. Spreading on galectin-8 resulted in a larger projected cell area compared to that on fibronectin, by more extensive formation of filopodia, coupled with an inability to activate focal adhesion and stress fiber assembly. These differences could be partially reversed by experimental manipulations of small G-proteins of the Rho family and their downstream targets, such as formins, the Arp2/3 complex, and Rho kinase. Another factor affecting the spreading process was shown to be the enhanced physical adhesion of the cells to galectin-8, as compared to fibronectin. Notably, at least one process, the formation of adherent filopodia, was synergistically upregulated by both ligands, so filopodia development on the substrate coated with a mixture of fibronectin and galectin-8 was far more prominent than on each ligand alone.