A multicentre study on the clinical characteristics of newborns infected with coronavirus disease 2019 during the omicron wave

ObjectiveTo investigate the clinical characteristics and outcomes of newborns infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) during the Omicron wave.MethodsFrom December 1, 2022, to January 4, 2023, clinical data were collected from neonates with COVID-19 who were admitted to 10 hospitals in Foshan City, China. Their epidemiological histories, clinical manifestations and outcomes were analysed. The neonates were divided into symptomatic and asymptomatic groups. The t test or χ2 test was used for comparisons between groups.ResultsA total of 286 children were diagnosed, including 166 males, 120 females, 273 full-term infants and 13 premature infants. They were 5.5 (0–30) days old on average when they were admitted to the hospital. These children had contact with patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and were infected through horizontal transmission. This study included 33 asymptomatic and 253 symptomatic patients, among whom 143 were diagnosed with upper respiratory tract infections and 110 were diagnosed with pneumonia. There were no severe or critical patients. Fever (220 patients) was the most common clinical manifestation, with a duration of 1.1 (1–6) days. The next most common clinical manifestations were cough with nasal congestion or runny nose (4 patients), cough (34 patients), poor appetite (7 patients), shortness of breath (15 patients), and poor general status (1 patient). There were no significant abnormalities in routine blood tests among the neonates infected with COVID-19 except for mononucleosis. However, compared with the asymptomatic group, in the symptomatic group, the leukocyte and neutrophil granulocyte counts were significantly decreased, and the monocyte count was significantly increased. C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were significantly increased (≥10 mg/L) in 9 patients. Myocardial enzyme, liver function, kidney function and other tests showed no obvious abnormalities.ConclusionsIn this study, neonates infected with the Omicron variant were asymptomatic or had mild disease. Symptomatic patients had lower leucocyte and neutrophil levels than asymptomatic patients

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Using citation redistribution to estimate unbiased expected citation count from a biased citation network

Most readers can only read a fraction of the papers written on a topic. The heuristic of reading “highly cited articles first” is common, but certain types of articles are more likely to be cited without being more valid science. Moreover, various types of bias, including selection bias, sponsor bias, and contributor- and affiliation-related biases, exist in publications, and it is difficult for literature users to determine whether a particular document is biased. Therefore, we aim to create a new ranking heuristic that is based on risk of bias. As a first step, our prior work proposed a network metric, the ratio between the real and expected citation count, in order to select “marginalized papers” (Fu, Yuan, and Schneider, 2021). “Marginalized papers” are those that received far fewer citations than expected, perhaps in part because they contradict the dominant view or are less well-known. In principle, an unbiased paper should disclose the existence of multiple points of view through citation. Therefore, our work uses citation of marginalized papers to estimate the risk of bias. Calculating the expected citation count is tricky but important. We improved our prior approach by (1) grouping papers by publication year into “generations,” (2) evenly redistributing the total citations made in one generation between all papers in previous generations; (3) using the cumulative sum to obtain the expected citations for each paper. This new method generated more realistic expected citation counts than our prior approach. Our future work will focus on creating a method that ranks papers by how well they cite the “marginalized papers.”University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus Research Board RB21012NSF CAREER award 2046454Ope

Additional file 1 of Clinical characteristics and mortality predictors among very old patients with pulmonary thromboembolism: a multicenter study report

Additional file 1: Supplement. Echocardiography in very old patients with PTE