In this work, the two-step headspace (HS) technique was applied to determine the actual volatile compositions of tea infusions. In order to eliminate the influence of water vapor to the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis and enable the capability to determine the volatile compounds in water base samples, a programed temperature vaporizer (PTV) was employed for the additional pre-concentration of thee analytes. While using the reported method, the volatile compounds were retained by the absorbent...

Human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) is primarily associated with common cold in children, elderly and immunocompromised individuals. Outbreaks caused by HCoV-NL63 are rare. Here we report a cluster of HCoV-NL63 cases with severe lower respiratory tract infection that arose in Guangzhou, China, in 2018. Twenty-three hospitalized children were confirmed to be HCoV-NL63 positive, and most of whom were hospitalized with severe pneumonia or acute bronchitis. Whole genomes of HCoV-NL63 were obtained using next-generation sequencing. Phylogenetic and...

Worldwide emergence of Salmonella enterica serovar Newport (S. Newport) infection in humans, in parallel with a significant increasing prevalence of antimicrobial resistance (AR), is a serious public health concern. However, the prevalence of S. Newport resistance in China remains largely unknown. A retrospective study of 287 S. Newport clinical isolates collected during 1997–2018 was undertaken for characterization of AR profiles using the micro-dilution assay. We found a recent emergence of colistin resistance in four Chinese...

The dissipation and residues of tebuconazole in green onion (welsh onion and chive) in China were firstly investigated based on a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe method (QuEChERS) combined with high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV). In the method validation, the fortified recoveries ranged from 96% to 100% with relative standard deviations of ≤10%. The dissipation rate of tebuconazole follows the first-order kinetics, with the half-lives of 9.4–9.9 days. Based on the terminal residue...

In this work, a novel xonotlite nanocomposite was synthesised with abandoned eggshell by hydrothermal method, and organic-modified with toluene diisocyanate (TDI) for the removal of Pb(II) and Cd(II) from wastewater. The xonotlite and organic-modified xonotlite were characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunner-Emmet-Teller (BET) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) methods. The effect of solution pH, contact time, adsorbent dose, and initial concentrations were also investigated. The organic-modified xonotlite was found to...

In December 2019, Wuhan, China suffered a serious outbreak of a novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID) caused by novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV 2). To quickly identify the pathogen, we designed and screened primer sets, and established a sensitive and specific qRT-PCR assay for SARS-CoV 2; the lower limit of detection (LOD) was 15 (95% CI: 9.8–21) copies per reaction. We combined this qRT-PCR assay with an automatic integration system for nucleic acid...

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was the result of the rapid transmission of a highly pathogenic coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), for which there is no efficacious vaccine or therapeutic. Toward the development of a vaccine, here we expressed and evaluated as potential candidates four versions of the spike (S) protein using an insect cell expression system: receptor binding domain (RBD), S1 subunit, the wild-type S ectodomain (S-WT), and the...

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was the result of the rapid transmission of a highly pathogenic coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), for which there is no efficacious vaccine or therapeutic. Toward the development of a vaccine, here we expressed and evaluated as potential candidates four versions of the spike (S) protein using an insect cell expression system: receptor binding domain (RBD), S1 subunit, the wild-type S ectodomain (S-WT), and the...

The interferon-inducible myxovirus resistance B (MxB) protein has been reported to inhibit HIV-1 and herpesviruses by blocking the nuclear import of viral DNA. Here, we report a new antiviral mechanism in which MxB restricts the nuclear import of HIV-1 regulatory protein Rev, and as a result, diminishes Rev-dependent expression of HIV-1 Gag protein. Specifically, MxB disrupts the interaction of Rev with the nuclear transport receptor, transportin 1 (TNPO1). Supporting this, the TNPO1-independent Rev variants become...

We studied plasma antibody responses of 35 patients about 1 month after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Titers of antibodies binding to the viral nucleocapsid and spike proteins were significantly higher in patients with severe disease. Likewise, mean antibody neutralization titers against SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus and live virus were higher in the sicker patients, by ∼5-fold and ∼7-fold, respectively. These findings have important implications for those pursuing plasma therapy, isolation of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, and determinants of immunity.

Mosquito-transmitted flaviviruses cause widespread disease across the world. To provide better molecular tools for drug screens and pathogenesis studies, we report a new approach to produce stable NanoLuc-tagged flaviviruses, including dengue virus serotypes 1-4, Japanese encephalitis virus, yellow fever virus, West Nile virus, and Zika virus. Since the reporter gene is often engineered at the capsid gene region, the capsid sequence must be duplicated to flank the reporter gene; such capsid duplication is essential for...

Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-2-tam-10.1177_1758835920977117 for Low intratumor heterogeneity correlates with increased response to PD-1 blockade in renal cell carcinoma by Xia Ran, Jinyuan Xiao, Yi Zhang, Huajing Teng, Fang Cheng, Huiqian Chen, Kaifan Zhang and Zhongsheng Sun in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology

Background:Intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) has been shown to be inversely associated with immune infiltration in several cancers including clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), but it remains unclear whether ITH is associated with response to immunotherapy (e.g. PD-1 blockade) in ccRCC.Methods:We quantified ITH using mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity, investigated the association of ITH with immune parameters in patients with ccRCC (n = 336) as well as those with papillary RCC (pRCC, n = 280) from The Cancer...

Co-occurrence of hypervirulence and KPC-2 carbapenem resistant phenotypes in a highly-transmissible ST11 clone ofKlebsiella pneumoniae has elicited deep concerns from public health stand point. To address this puzzle, we conducted a large-scale epidemiological, clinical and genomic study of K. pneumonia ST11 clones with both hypervirulence and carbapenem resistance in two tertiary hospitals in Zhejiang province. Most of the patients (15/23) were diagnosed with exclusively carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP) infections. Ten death cases were reported, some...

COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection and was initially discovered in Wuhan. This outbreak quickly spread all over China and then to more than 20 other countries. SARS-CoV-2 fluorescent microsphere immunochromatographic test strips were prepared by the combination of time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay with a lateral flow assay. The analytical performance and clinical evaluation of this testing method was done and the clinical significance of the testing method was verified. The LLOD of SARS-CoV-2 antibody IgG...

Macrophage differentiation is associated with tumorigenesis, including the tumorigenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Herein, we explored the value of macrophage differentiation-associated genes (MDGs) in the prognosis of HCC using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) databases. We performed multivariate Cox regression analyses to identify the hub genes affecting HCC patient prognoses. The correlations between hub genes and macrophage differentiation and immune checkpoint inhibitors (PD-1, PD-L1, and CTLA4)...

It is common to compare individualized treatment rules based on the value function, which is the expected potential outcome under the treatment rule. Although the value function is not point-identified when there is unmeasured confounding, it still defines a partial order among the treatment rules under Rosenbaum’s sensitivity analysis model. We first consider how to compare two treatment rules with unmeasured confounding in the single-decision setting and then use this pairwise test to rank multiple...

The single-index models (SIMs) provide an efficient way of coping with high-dimensional nonparametric estimation problems and avoid the “curse of dimensionality.” Many existing estimation procedures for SIMs were built on least square loss, which is popular for its mathematical beauty but is non-robust to non-normal errors and outliers. This article addressed the question of both robustness and efficiency of estimation methods based on a new data-driven weighted linear combination of convex loss functions instead of...

The dysfunction of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) has been observed in coronavirus infection disease (COVID-19) patients, but whether RAS inhibitors, such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs), are associated with clinical outcomes remains unknown. COVID-19 patients with hypertension were enrolled to evaluate the effect of RAS inhibitors. We observed that patients receiving ACEI or ARB therapy had a lower rate of severe diseases and a trend toward a...

Background: Retinal neovascularization, which is characterized by the increased proliferation, migration, and tube formation of retinal microvascular endothelial cells (RMECs), contributes to the progression of diabetic retinopathy (DR). MiR-409-5p has been reported to be upregulated in peripheral blood of DR patients and in vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-induced RMECs. However, the role of miR-409-5p in retinal neovascularization of DR remains unelucidated. Method: The expression of miR-409-5p was measured in retinal tissues of streptozocin-induced and db/db...

It is common to compare individualized treatment rules based on the value function, which is the expected potential outcome under the treatment rule. Although the value function is not point-identified when there is unmeasured confounding, it still defines a partial order among the treatment rules under Rosenbaum’s sensitivity analysis model. We first consider how to compare two treatment rules with unmeasured confounding in the single-decision setting and then use this pairwise test to rank multiple...

Unexplained pneumonia (UP) caused by a novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) emerged in China in late December 2019 and has infected more than 9000 cases by 31 January 2020. Shanghai reported the first imported case of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) in 20 January 2020. A combinative approach of real-time RT–PCR, CRISPR-based assay and metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) were used to diagnose this unexplained pneumonia patient. Real-time RT–PCR and CRISPR-based assay both...

Unexplained pneumonia (UP) caused by a novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) emerged in China in late December 2019 and has infected more than 9000 cases by 31 January 2020. Shanghai reported the first imported case of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) in 20 January 2020. A combinative approach of real-time RT–PCR, CRISPR-based assay and metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) were used to diagnose this unexplained pneumonia patient. Real-time RT–PCR and CRISPR-based assay both...

COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection and was initially discovered in Wuhan. This outbreak quickly spread all over China and then to more than 20 other countries. SARS-CoV-2 fluorescent microsphere immunochromatographic test strips were prepared by the combination of time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay with a lateral flow assay. The analytical performance and clinical evaluation of this testing method was done and the clinical significance of the testing method was verified. The LLOD of SARS-CoV-2 antibody IgG...

Serology detection is recognized for its sensitivity in convalescent patients with COVID-19, in comparison with nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs). This article aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of serologic methods for COVID-19 based on assay design and post-symptom-onset intervals. Two authors independently searched PubMed, Cochrane library, Ovid, EBSCO for case–control, longitudinal and cohort studies that determined the diagnostic accuracy of serology tests in comparison with NAATs in COVID-19 cases and used QUADAS-2 for quality...