HCV: 1. Viral kinetic and sequencing study and 2. Incident study.

HCV: 1. Viral kinetic and sequencing study and 2. Incident study

Observed Loss and Ineffectiveness of Mosquito Larvicides Applied to Catch Basins in the Northern Suburbs of Chicago IL, 2014

In the northeastern part of the greater Chicago metropolitan area, the North Shore Mosquito Abatement District (NSMAD) treats approximately 50,000 catch basins each season with larvicide tablets as part of its effort to reduce local populations of the West Nile virus (WNV) vector Culex pipiens . During the 2014 season, an NSMAD technician monitored a subset of 60–195 basins weekly for 18 weeks among the communities of the District for the presence of mosquitoes. Monitoring found no clear evidence in the reduction of mosquitoes with the use of larvicides, and visual inspections of 211 larvicide-treated basins found that the majority (162, 76.8%) were missing tablets 1–17 weeks after applications. This loss of treatment may be due to the rapid dissolution or flushing of larvicides and would help explain why the larvicide appeared to be ineffective

The effect of IFN-based therapies on the short-term dynamics of alt in HCV-infected patients

IFN therapy of HCV-infection has been shown to reduce production of virus from infected cells, but its effect on hepatocytes is less well understood. One indicator of liver damage is ALT, which has been used as an associated diagnostic for HCV infection

A Standard-Based Citywide Health Information Exchange for Public Health in Response to COVID-19: Development Study

BackgroundDisease surveillance is a critical function of public health, provides essential information about the disease burden and the clinical and epidemiologic parameters of disease, and is an important element of effective and timely case and contact tracing. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the essential role of disease surveillance in preserving public health. In theory, the standard data formats and exchange methods provided by electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use should enable rapid health care data exchange in the setting of disruptive health care events, such as a pandemic. In reality, access to data remains challenging and, even if available, often lacks conformity to regulated standards. ObjectiveWe sought to use regulated interoperability standards already in production to generate awareness of regional bed capacity and enhance the capture of epidemiological risk factors and clinical variables among patients tested for SARS-CoV-2. We described the technical and operational components, governance model, and timelines required to implement the public health order that mandated electronic reporting of data from EHRs among hospitals in the Chicago jurisdiction. We also evaluated the data sources, infrastructure requirements, and the completeness of data supplied to the platform and the capacity to link these sources. MethodsFollowing a public health order mandating data submission by all acute care hospitals in Chicago, we developed the technical infrastructure to combine multiple data feeds from those EHR systems—a regional data hub to enhance public health surveillance. A cloud-based environment was created that received ELR, consolidated clinical data architecture, and bed capacity data feeds from sites. Data governance was planned from the project initiation to aid in consensus and principles for data use. We measured the completeness of each feed and the match rate between feeds. ResultsData from 88,906 persons from CCDA records among 14 facilities and 408,741 persons from ELR records among 88 facilities were submitted. Most (n=448,380, 90.1%) records could be matched between CCDA and ELR feeds. Data fields absent from ELR feeds included travel histories, clinical symptoms, and comorbidities. Less than 5% of CCDA data fields were empty. Merging CCDA with ELR data improved race, ethnicity, comorbidity, and hospitalization information data availability. ConclusionsWe described the development of a citywide public health data hub for the surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We were able to assess the completeness of existing ELR feeds, augment those feeds with CCDA documents, establish secure transfer methods for data exchange, develop a cloud-based architecture to enable secure data storage and analytics, and produce dashboards for monitoring of capacity and the disease burden. We consider this public health and clinical data registry as an informative example of the power of common standards across EHRs and a potential template for future use of standards to improve public health surveillance