ABO Blood Group Type and Susceptibility to COVID-19 Infection

Since December 2019, the SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to extend over most of the world, infecting over four million people and causing well over 300,000 deaths so far (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html, accessed on May 14, 2020). A significant percentage of infected patients develop severe symptoms and life-threatening conditions. While COVID-19 infection can affect all ages, available evidence points to older age and pre-existing comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease, as important risk factors related to increased mortality rates. [1-3] Moreover, recent reports from China and the U.S. have suggested that the susceptibility, and perhaps even mortality, to Covid-19 infection might be influenced by the ABO blood type. The purpose of the present minireview is to analyze the evidence published in the COVID-19 literature and to put it in the context of the existing knowledge about the association of blood group types and disease

Immunological and Hematopoietic Biotechnology Studies

The purpose of the work carried under this interchanges was to support the development of space flight biotechnology experiments in the areas of immunology and hematopoiesis to facilitate the commercial development of space. The studies involved the interaction and development of experiments with biotechnology companies for necessary ground-based studies to allow the development of flight studies. The thrust of the work was to develop experiments with the Chiron Corporation and Bioserve involving the use of interleukin-2 to modulate the effects of spaceflight on immune responses. Spaceflight has been shown to have multiple effects on immune responses (1). lnterleukin-2 is an immuno-regulator that could have potential to counter some of the alterations induced in immune responses by spaceflight (1). To test this possibility before flight, rats were suspended antiorthostatically (2) and treated with interleukin-2. Antiorthostatic suspension is a model for some of the effects of spaceflight on immune responses (2). The interleukin-2 was given to see if it could alter some of the effects of suspension. This was achieved. As a result of these studies, two flight experiments were developed and flown with the Chiron Corp. And Bioserve to determine if use of interleukin-2 could prevent or attenuate the effects of space flight on immune responses

W-NetPan: Double-U network for inter-sensor self-supervised pan-sharpening

The increasing availability of remote sensing data allows dealing with spatial-spectral limitations by means of pan-sharpening methods. However, fusing inter-sensor data poses important challenges, in terms of resolution differences, sensor-dependent deformations and ground-truth data availability, that demand more accurate pan-sharpening solutions. In response, this paper proposes a novel deep learning-based pan-sharpening model which is termed as the double-U network for self-supervised pan-sharpening (W-NetPan). In more details, the proposed architecture adopts an innovative W-shape that integrates two U-Net segments which sequentially work for spatially matching and fusing inter-sensor multi-modal data. In this way, a synergic effect is produced where the first segment resolves inter-sensor deviations while stimulating the second one to achieve a more accurate data fusion. Additionally, a joint loss formulation is proposed for effectively training the proposed model without external data supervision. The experimental comparison, conducted over four coupled Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 datasets, reveals the advantages of W-NetPan with respect to several of the most important state-of-the-art pan-sharpening methods available in the literature. The codes related to this paper will be available at https://github.com/rufernan/WNetPan

Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC): Association with Inflammation and Autoimmunity

It has become increasingly evident that a high percentage of patients that recover from acute COVID-19 infection continue to suffer from a variety of persistent symptoms even months after viral clearance, the most common ones being fatigue, dyspnea, anosmia, dysgeusia, cognitive dysfunction, and psychological problems, including anxiety and depression. This syndrome, known as Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), can severely affect the life quality and represents an important health care concern. The exact causes for the symptoms observed in patients with PASC remain to be adequately characterized, but are likely to be associated with multiple factors, including residual disease and/or inflammation, organ damage, effects of hospitalization and/or prolonged ventilation, as well as effects of social isolation and stress. This mini-review discusses evidence that may link both inflammatory and auto-immune processes in the pathophysiology of PASC

Schistosoma mansoni in IL-4-deficient mice

Immunopathology and Immune responses to Schistosoma mansoni were examined in IL-4 -/- mice. IL-5 and IL-10 production by lymphoid cells stimulated with soluble egg antigen (SEA), peripheral eosinophilla and serum levels of soluble IL-4 receptor but not IgE were all significantly elevated over background normal levels in IL-4 -/- mice as a result of infection. Additionally, IL-10 and IL-5 in addition to IL-2 and IFN-γ transcripts were equally evident in diseased liver tissue from infected IL-4 -/- and wild-type mice. Nevertheless, analysis of antigen-stimulated IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-10 and IFN-γ production by lymphoid organ cells from infected or egg-injected IL-4 / mice revealed a more Th1 -like pattern of cytokine production (IFN-γ > IL-5) than In (wild-type) mice in which a stronger type 2 response to SEA was detectable (IL-4, IL-5 > IFN-γ). Despite this, at 8 and 16 weeks after infection, liver pathology, as indicated by the size, ceilularity, cellular composition and collagen content of granulomas, was similar in IL-4 / and wild-type animals. As in wild-type animals, granuloma size at week 16 was smaller than at week 8, Indicating that modulation had occurred in the absence of IL-4. Differences in pathology were seen only when eggs were experimentally embolized to the lungs, in which case IL-4 / mice made smaller granulomatous responses than did wild-type animals. These data clearly show that IL-4 Is not necessary for the hepatic granuloma formation which occurs during experimental schistosomiasi

Predicting 30-Day Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with Community-Acquired Pneumonia Using Statistical and Machine Learning Approaches

Background: Predicting if a hospitalized patient with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) will or will not survive after admission to the hospital is important for research purposes as well as for institution of early patient management interventions. Although population-level mortality prediction scores for these patients have been around for many years, novel patient-level algorithms are needed. The objective of this study was to assess several statistical and machine learning models for their ability to predict 30-day mortality in hospitalized patients with CAP. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the University of Louisville (UofL) Pneumonia Study database. Six different statistical and/or machine learning methods were used to develop patientlevel prediction models for hospitalized patients with CAP. For each model, nine different statistics were calculated to provide measures of the overall performance of the models. Results: A total of 3249 unique hospitalized patients with CAP were enrolled in the study, 2743 were included in the model building (training) dataset, while the remaining 686 were included in the testing dataset. From the full population, death at 30-days post discharge was documented in 458 (13.4%) patients. All models resulted in high variation in the ability to predict survivors and non-survivors at 30 days. Conclusions: In conclusion, this study suggests that accurate patient-level prediction of 30-day mortality in hospitalized patients with CAP is difficult with statistical and machine learning approaches. It will be important to evaluate novel variables and other modeling approaches to better predict poor clinical outcomes in these patients to ensure early and appropriate interventions are instituted

understanding the roles of cytokines and neutrophil activity and neutrophil apoptosis in the protective versus deleterious inflammatory response in pneumonia

SummaryInflammation is a double-edged sword in the outcome of pneumonia. On the one hand, an effective and timely inflammatory response is required to eliminate the invading respiratory pathogen. On the other, a toxic and prolonged inflammatory response may result in lung injury and poor outcomes, even in those receiving advanced medical care. This review focuses on recent understanding of the dynamics of the cytokine response, neutrophil activity, and responsiveness to cytokines and neutrophil lifespan as major elements of lung inflammation resulting in favorable or poor outcomes in lung infection primarily due to pneumococcus and influenza virus. Although some progress has been made in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the pneumonia inflammation axis composed of cytokines modulating neutrophil activation and neutrophil apoptosis, important questions remain to be answered. The degree of neutrophil activation, generation of reactive oxygen species, and the release of granule antimicrobial peptides play a key role in microbial pathogen clearance; however, prolonged neutrophil activation may contribute to lung injury and poor outcomes in pneumonia. Molecular markers of the mechanisms regulating neutrophil survival and apoptosis may help in the identification of novel therapeutic targets to modulate inflammation by inducing timely neutrophil apoptosis. A major task is to identify the mechanisms of dysregulation in inflammation leading to toxic responses, thereby targeting a biomarker and enabling timely therapies to modulate inflammation