Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Experiences and protocols from the Department of Prosthodontics at the Wuhan University

Statement of problem: The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic, and many countries and regions are still currently in the midst of the outbreak. This pandemic has caused prosthodontics units to suspend their clinical and educational operations in academia. Purpose: The purpose of this article was to review the experiences from the Department of Prosthodontics, Wuhan University School and Hospital of Stomatology (DP-WHUSHS) during the COVID-19 outbreak and the protocols DP-WHUSHS utilized to resume clinical activities after the outbreak. Material and methods: The descriptive approach was used in this article to provide a chronological narrative of the experiences and protocols from the DP-WHUSHS during the COVID-19 outbreak and after the outbreak. Results: During the COVID-19 outbreak period, clinical care was provided for patients with dental emergencies using enhanced Grade 2 or Garde 3 personal protective equipment (PPE). Teledentistry was used to provide care for patients with non-emergency needs. Online webinars and lectures were provided for the predoctoral students, residents, and dentists to minimize the interruption in their education and engage the dental community amid the pandemic. Various factors were considered before clinical activities resumed after the outbreak subsided. Additional resources were allocated for facility preparation and management and employee training. New infection control and clinical operation protocols were developed to minimize the healthcare-associated infection of airborne transmission diseases. The psychological health and mental wellness of the employees were emphasized. Distance or online education is still under rapid development to provide students and dentists opportunities to advance their knowledge amid the pandemic. Conclusions: Within the limitation of this descriptive review, the following conclusions were drawn. Patient welfare and emergency needs should be considered amid the pandemic. Enhanced Grade 2 or Grade 3 PPE should be used during the outbreak. Multifactorial considerations for work resumption after the outbreak included facility preparation and management, training for employees, and clinical operation management. In-person psychological consultation and online mental wellness programs were available to employees to improve their mental wellness. Distance or online education was under rapid development to minimize the interruption in education for the students and to engage the dental community amid a pandemic

A nonalcoholic fatty liver disease cirrhosis model in gerbil:the dynamic relationship between hepatic lipid metabolism and cirrhosis

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) usually takes decades to develop into cirrhosis, which limits the longitudinal study of NAFLD. This work aims at developing a NAFLD-caused cirrhosis model in gerbil and examining the dynamic relationship between hepatic lipid metabolism and cirrhosis. We fed gerbil a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet (HFHCD) for 24 weeks, and recorded the gerbil's phenotype at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24 weeks. The model's pathological process, lipid metabolism, oxidative stress, liver collagen deposition and presence of relevant cytokines were tested and evaluated during the full-time frame of disease onset. The gerbil model can induce nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) within 9 weeks, and can develop cirrhosis after 21 weeks induction. The model's lipids metabolism disorder is accompanied with the liver damage development. During the NAFLD progression, triglycerides (TG) and free fatty acids (FFA) have presented distinct rise and fall tendency, and the turning points are at the fibrosis stage. Besides that, the ratios of total cholesterol (CHO) to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) exhibited constant growth tendency, and have a good linear relationship with hepatic stellate cells (HSC) (R-2 = 0.802, P <0.001). The gerbil NAFLD cirrhosis model has been developed and possesses positive correlation between lipids metabolism and cirrhosis. The compelling rise and fall tendency of TG and FFA indicated that the fibrosis progression can lead to impairment in lipoprotein synthesis and engender decreased TG level. CHO/HDL-C ratios can imply the fibrosis progress and be used as a blood indicator for disease prediction and prevention

Spinless impurities and Kondo-like behavior in strongly correlated electron systems

We investigate magnetic properties induced by a spinless impurity in strongly correlated electron systems, i.e. the Hubbard model in the spatial dimension $D=1,2,$ and 3. For the 1D system exploiting the Bethe ansatz exact solution we find that the spin susceptibility and the local density of states in the vicinity of a spinless impurity show divergent behaviors. The results imply that the induced local moment is not completely quenched at any finite temperatures. On the other hand, the spin lattice relaxation rate obtained by bosonization and boundary conformal field theory satisfies a relation analogous to the Korringa law, $1/T_1T \sim \chi^2$. In the 2D and 3D systems, the analysis based upon the antiferromagnetically correlated Fermi liquid theory reveals that the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuation developed in the bulk is much suppressed in the vicinity of a spinless impurity, and thus magnetic properties are governed by the induced local moment, which leads to the Korringa law of $1/T_1$.Comment: 9pages,1figure, final version accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.B(Jan2001