The Prominence of Artificial Intelligence in COVID-19

In December 2019, a novel virus called COVID-19 had caused an enormous number of causalities to date. The battle with the novel Coronavirus is baffling and horrifying after the Spanish Flu 2019. While the front-line doctors and medical researchers have made significant progress in controlling the spread of the highly contiguous virus, technology has also proved its significance in the battle. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence has been adopted in many medical applications to diagnose many diseases, even baffling experienced doctors. Therefore, this survey paper explores the methodologies proposed that can aid doctors and researchers in early and inexpensive methods of diagnosis of the disease. Most developing countries have difficulties carrying out tests using the conventional manner, but a significant way can be adopted with Machine and Deep Learning. On the other hand, the access to different types of medical images has motivated the researchers. As a result, a mammoth number of techniques are proposed. This paper first details the background knowledge of the conventional methods in the Artificial Intelligence domain. Following that, we gather the commonly used datasets and their use cases to date. In addition, we also show the percentage of researchers adopting Machine Learning over Deep Learning. Thus we provide a thorough analysis of this scenario. Lastly, in the research challenges, we elaborate on the problems faced in COVID-19 research, and we address the issues with our understanding to build a bright and healthy environment.Comment: 63 pages, 3 tables, 17 figure

MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF MAJOR VECTOR MOSQUITOES OF BANGLADESH

Mosquito-borne diseases are considered major contributors to vector-borne diseases, threatening more than eighty per cent of the global population. Pest management depends on proper identification techniques. The barcode region of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene of mitochondrial DNA has recently been proposed as a systematic tool, functional in taxonomy and evolutionary study for species definition. This work is the first attempt to identify the main vector mosquito species from Bangladesh based on the MT-COI gene. Eleven vector mosquitos were identified. AT content (69%) was found to be higher than GC content (31%) at the COI barcode region of the mosquito. The interspecific genetic divergence range of medically important mosquitoes was 0.01-0.21. Haplotype analysis revealed that Mansonia annulifera diverged highly from its immediate ancestor by the highest mutational steps (59). Phylogenetic analysis indicated that species belonging to the same family were in the same major clade. Overall, our findings contribute to a better method of identifying major vector mosquito species by COI genes and for implementing management measures against mosquito pests in Bangladesh

Vashantor: A Large-scale Multilingual Benchmark Dataset for Automated Translation of Bangla Regional Dialects to Bangla Language

The Bangla linguistic variety is a fascinating mix of regional dialects that adds to the cultural diversity of the Bangla-speaking community. Despite extensive study into translating Bangla to English, English to Bangla, and Banglish to Bangla in the past, there has been a noticeable gap in translating Bangla regional dialects into standard Bangla. In this study, we set out to fill this gap by creating a collection of 32,500 sentences, encompassing Bangla, Banglish, and English, representing five regional Bangla dialects. Our aim is to translate these regional dialects into standard Bangla and detect regions accurately. To achieve this, we proposed models known as mT5 and BanglaT5 for translating regional dialects into standard Bangla. Additionally, we employed mBERT and Bangla-bert-base to determine the specific regions from where these dialects originated. Our experimental results showed the highest BLEU score of 69.06 for Mymensingh regional dialects and the lowest BLEU score of 36.75 for Chittagong regional dialects. We also observed the lowest average word error rate of 0.1548 for Mymensingh regional dialects and the highest of 0.3385 for Chittagong regional dialects. For region detection, we achieved an accuracy of 85.86% for Bangla-bert-base and 84.36% for mBERT. This is the first large-scale investigation of Bangla regional dialects to Bangla machine translation. We believe our findings will not only pave the way for future work on Bangla regional dialects to Bangla machine translation, but will also be useful in solving similar language-related challenges in low-resource language conditions

Development of Quantitative Rapid Isothermal Amplification Assay for Leishmania donovani

Quantification of pathogen load, although challenging, is of paramount importance for accurate diagnosis and clinical management of a range of infectious diseases in a point-of-need testing (PONT) scenario such as in resource-limited settings. We formulated a quantification approach to test the standard-curve based absolute quantification ability of isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay. As a test of principle, a 10-fold dilution series of Leishmania donovani (LD) genomic DNA prepared in nuclease-free-water (NFW), and from culture-spiked-blood (CSB) were tested, and a 15 min assay was performed. A modified algorithm was formulated to derive the detection outcome. The threshold-record times (Tr) in seconds thus obtained were plotted against the initial load of parasite genomes for log-linear regression analysis. The quantitative RPA (Q-RPA) assay was further evaluated against a LD quantitative (q)-PCR assay with DNA extracted from visceral and post-Kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis case specimens and stratified into different ranges of threshold cycle (Ct). The best-fitted regression models were found linear with mean r2/root mean square error (RMSE) values of residual points (in seconds) estimated as 0.996/8.063 and 0.992/7.46 for replicated series of NFW and CSB, respectively. In both series, the lower limit of detection reached less than 0.1 parasite genome equivalent DNA. Absolute agreement between Q-RPA and LD-qPCR was found for test positivity, and strong positive correlations were observed between the Tr and Ct values (r = 0.89; p < 0.0001) as well as between the absolute parasite loads (r = 0.87; p < 0.0001) quantified by respective assays. The findings in this very first Q-RPA assay for leishmaniasis are suggestive of its potential in monitoring LD load in clinical specimens, and the development of rapid Q-RPA assays for other infectious diseases

Evaluation of Rapid Extraction Methods Coupled with a Recombinase Polymerase Amplification Assay for Point-of-Need Diagnosis of Post-Kala-Azar Dermal Leishmaniasis

To detect Post-kala-azar leishmaniasis (PKDL) cases, several molecular methods with promising diagnostic efficacy have been developed that involve complicated and expensive DNA extraction methods, thus limiting their application in resource-poor settings. As an alternative, we evaluated two rapid DNA extraction methods and determined their impact on the detection of the parasite DNA using our newly developed recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay. Skin samples were collected from suspected PKDL cases following their diagnosis through national guidelines. The extracted DNA from three skin biopsy samples using three different extraction methods was subjected to RPA and qPCR. The qPCR and RPA assays exhibited highest sensitivities when reference DNA extraction method using Qiagen (Q) kit was followed. In contrast, the sensitivity of the RPA assay dropped to 76.7% and 63.3%, respectively, when the boil & spin (B&S) and SpeedXtract (SE) rapid extraction methods were performed. Despite this compromised sensitivity, the B&S-RPA technique yielded an excellent agreement with both Q-qPCR (k = 0.828) and Q-RPA (k = 0.831) techniques. As expected, the reference DNA extraction method was found to be superior in terms of diagnostic efficacy. Finally, to apply the rapid DNA extraction methods in resource-constrained settings, further methodological refinement is warranted to improve DNA yield and purity through rigorous experiments

Antidiarrheal activity of methanol extract of Piper sylvaticum (roxb.) stem in mice and in silico molecular docking of its isolated compounds

Background: Piper sylvaticum (Roxb.), is commonly used in traditional medicine to treat a number of disease like in asthma, diarrhea, chronic cough, cold, piles, tuberculosis, and wounds. In this study, we investigated the antidiarrheal activity of methanol extract of P. sylvaticum stem (Met.PSS) in animal models. Later, molecular docking study was performed to better understand its molecular mechanism and to determine the potent phytocompounds of this plant for the antidiarrheal property.Methods: The stems were extracted with methanol and subjected to in vivo antidiarrheal study using the castor oil-induced diarrhea and castor oil induced enteropooling tests in animal models. And then, in silico molecular docking study was performed using Schrödinger suite Maestro v10.1.Results: Met.PSS exhibited a dose-dependent and statistically significant antidiarrheal activity in both castor oil-induced diarrhea and enteropooling tests at the doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg. Additionally, our molecular docking analysis exhibited that four compounds viz. piperine, piperlonguminine, sylvamide, and sylvatine have the best binding affinity against the target enzyme (M3 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor) in comparison to reference drug Loperamide.Conclusions: The present study suggests that Met.PSS possess significant antidiarrheal activity which could be related to the presence of various secondary plant metabolites or phytochemicals. Additionally, the phytocompounds, i.e., piperine, piperlonguminine, sylvamide, and sylvatine were found to be most effective in molecular docking study

Evaluation of Loopamp™ Leishmania Detection Kit and Leishmania Antigen ELISA for Post-Elimination Detection and Management of Visceral Leishmaniasis in Bangladesh

With reduced prevalence of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in the Indian subcontinent (ISC), direct and field deployable diagnostic tests are needed to implement an effective diagnostic and surveillance algorithm for post-elimination VL control. In this regard, here we investigated the diagnostic efficacies of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay (Loopamp™ Leishmania Detection Kit, Eiken Chemical CO., Ltd, Japan), a real-time quantitative PCR assay (qPCR) and the Leishmania antigen ELISA (CLIN-TECH, UK) with different sampling techniques and evaluated their prospect to incorporate into post-elimination VL control strategies. Eighty clinically and rK39 rapid diagnostic test confirmed VL cases and 80 endemic healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Peripheral blood and dried blood spots (DBS) were collected from all the participants at the time of diagnosis. DNA was extracted from whole blood (WB) and DBS via silica columns (QIAGEN) and boil & spin (B&S) methods and tested with qPCR and Loopamp. Urine was collected from all participants at the time of diagnosis and was directly subjected to the Leishmania antigen ELISA. 41 patients were followed up and urine samples were collected at day 30 and day 180 after treatment and ELISA was performed. The sensitivities of the Loopamp-WB(B&S) and Loopamp-WB(QIA) were 96.2% (95% CI 89·43-99·22) and 95% (95% CI 87·69-98·62) respectively. The sensitivity of Loopamp- DBS(QIA) was 85% (95% CI 75·26- 92·00). The sensitivities of the qPCR-WB(QIA) and qPCR-DBS(QIA) were 93.8% (95% CI 86·01-97·94) and 72.5% (95% CI 61·38-81·90) respectively. The specificity of all molecular assays was 100%. The sensitivity and specificity of the Leishmania antigen ELISA were 97.5% (95% CI 91·47-99·70) and 91.95% (95% CI 84·12-96·70) respectively. The Leishmania antigen ELISA depicted clinical cure at day 180 in all the followed-up cases. Efficacy and sustainability identify the Loopamp-WB(B&S) and the Leishmania antigen ELISA as promising and minimally invasive VL diagnostic tools to support VL diagnostic and surveillance activities respectively in the post-elimination era

Revised checklist and distribution maps of Anopheles (Insecta: Diptera: Culicidae: Anophelinae) mosquitoes of Bangladesh

It has been 25 years since the publication of the first checklist of mosquito in Bangladesh and several significant taxonomic changes have occurred. Therefore, considering these changes, we prepare an updated list of Anopheles species in Bangladesh along with their distribution maps. A total of 36 Anopheles species have been listed from Bangladesh and these species belong to either the sub-genus Anopheles or Cellia but we captured 30 species in our study. Eleven species were distributed all over Bangladesh but Anopheles nivipes and An. turkhudi were found only in Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar areas respectively. Anopheles sundaicus were found limited number in the costal belt of Bangladesh. Nearly all Anopheles species were found in Southeastern hilly parts of Bangladesh. However, An. vagus, An. philippinensis, An. barbirostris distribute all over the Bangladesh with high density

A Multi-Country, Single-Blinded, Phase 2 Study to Evaluate a Point-of-Need System for Rapid Detection of Leishmaniasis and Its Implementation in Endemic Settings

With the advancement of isothermal nucleic acid amplification techniques, detection of the pathogenic DNA in clinical samples at point-of-need is no longer a dream. The newly developed recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay incorporated in a suitcase laboratory has shown promising diagnostic efficacy over real-time PCR in detection of leishmania DNA from clinical samples. For broader application of this point-of-need system, we undertook a current multi-country diagnostic evaluation study towards establishing this technique in different endemic settings which would be beneficial for the ongoing elimination programs for leishmaniasis. For this study purpose, clinical samples from confirmed visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL) patients were subjected to both real-time PCR and RPA assay in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Further skin samples from confirmed cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) patients were also included from Sri Lanka. A total of 450 clinical samples from VL patients, 429 from PKDL patients, 47 from CL patients, and 322 from endemic healthy/healthy controls were under investigation to determine the diagnostic efficacy of RPA assay in comparison to real-time PCR. A comparative sensitivity of both methods was found where real-time PCR and RPA assay showed 96.86% (95% CI: 94.45–98.42) and 88.85% (95% CI: 85.08–91.96) sensitivity respectively in the diagnosis of VL cases. This new isothermal method also exhibited promising diagnostic sensitivity (93.50%) for PKDL cases, when a skin sample was used. Due to variation in the sequence of target amplicons, RPA assay showed comparatively lower sensitivity (55.32%) than that of real-time PCR in Sri Lanka for the diagnosis of CL cases. Except for India, the assay presented absolute specificity in the rest of the sites. Excellent concordance between the two molecular methods towards detection of leishmania DNA in clinical samples substantiates the application of RPA assay incorporated in a suitcase laboratory for point-of-need diagnosis of VL and PKDL in low resource endemic settings. However, further improvisation of the method is necessary for diagnosis of CL