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Hannum ME, Koch RJ, Ramirez VA, Marks SS, Toskala AK, Herriman RD, Lin C, Joseph PV, Reed DR. Taste loss as a distinct symptom of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis. MEDRXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR HEALTH SCIENCES 2021:2021.10.09.21264771. [PMID: 34671775 PMCID: PMC8528083 DOI: 10.1101/2021.10.09.21264771] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
Chemosensory scientists have been skeptical that reports of COVID-19 taste loss are genuine, in part because before COVID-19, taste loss was rare and often confused with smell loss. Therefore, to establish the predicted prevalence rate of taste loss in COVID-19 patients, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 376 papers published in 2020-2021, with 241 meeting all inclusion criteria. Additionally, we explored how methodological differences (direct vs. self-report measures) may affect these estimates. We hypothesized that direct prevalence measures of taste loss would be the most valid because they avoid the taste/smell confusion of self-report. The meta-analysis showed that, among 138,897 COVID-19-positive patients, 39.2% reported taste dysfunction (95% CI: 35.34-43.12%), and the prevalence estimates were slightly but not significantly higher from studies using direct (n = 18) versus self-report (n = 223) methodologies (Q = 0.57, df = 1, p = 0.45). Generally, males reported lower rates of taste loss than did females and taste loss was highest in middle-aged groups. Thus, taste loss is a bona fide symptom COVID-19, meriting further research into the most appropriate direct methods to measure it and its underlying mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Riley J Koch
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
| | - Vicente A Ramirez
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
- Department of Public Health, University of California Merced, Merced, CA 95348
| | - Sarah S Marks
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
| | - Aurora K Toskala
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
| | - Riley D Herriman
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
| | - Cailu Lin
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
| | - Paule V Joseph
- Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
- Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Danielle R Reed
- Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market St, Philadelphia PA 19104
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2
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Awasthi S, Wagner T, Venkatakrishnan AJ, Puranik A, Hurchik M, Agarwal V, Conrad I, Kirkup C, Arunachalam R, O'Horo J, Kremers W, Kashyap R, Morice W, Halamka J, Williams AW, Faubion WA, Badley AD, Gores GJ, Soundararajan V. Plasma IL-6 levels following corticosteroid therapy as an indicator of ICU length of stay in critically ill COVID-19 patients. Cell Death Discov 2021; 7:55. [PMID: 33723251 PMCID: PMC7958587 DOI: 10.1038/s41420-021-00429-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2020] [Revised: 11/14/2020] [Accepted: 12/04/2020] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and mortality in severe COVID-19 patients are driven by "cytokine storms" and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Interim clinical trial results suggest that the corticosteroid dexamethasone displays better 28-day survival in severe COVID-19 patients requiring ventilation or oxygen. In this study, 10 out of 16 patients (62.5%) that had an average plasma IL-6 value over 10 pg/mL post administration of corticosteroids also had worse outcomes (i.e., ICU stay >15 days or death), compared to 8 out of 41 patients (19.5%) who did not receive corticosteroids (p-value = 0.0024). Given this potential association between post-corticosteroid IL-6 levels and COVID-19 severity, we hypothesized that the glucocorticoid receptor (GR or NR3C1) may be coupled to IL-6 expression in specific cell types that govern cytokine release syndrome (CRS). Examining single-cell RNA-seq data from BALF of severe COVID-19 patients and nearly 2 million cells from a pan-tissue scan shows that alveolar macrophages, smooth muscle cells, and endothelial cells co-express NR3C1 and IL-6, motivating future studies on the links between the regulation of NR3C1 function and IL-6 levels.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - William Morice
- Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
- Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
| | - John Halamka
- Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
- Mayo Clinic Platform, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA
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Tayarani N MH. Applications of artificial intelligence in battling against covid-19: A literature review. CHAOS, SOLITONS, AND FRACTALS 2021; 142:110338. [PMID: 33041533 PMCID: PMC7532790 DOI: 10.1016/j.chaos.2020.110338] [Citation(s) in RCA: 59] [Impact Index Per Article: 19.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Accepted: 10/01/2020] [Indexed: 05/14/2023]
Abstract
Colloquially known as coronavirus, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), that causes CoronaVirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), has become a matter of grave concern for every country around the world. The rapid growth of the pandemic has wreaked havoc and prompted the need for immediate reactions to curb the effects. To manage the problems, many research in a variety of area of science have started studying the issue. Artificial Intelligence is among the area of science that has found great applications in tackling the problem in many aspects. Here, we perform an overview on the applications of AI in a variety of fields including diagnosis of the disease via different types of tests and symptoms, monitoring patients, identifying severity of a patient, processing covid-19 related imaging tests, epidemiology, pharmaceutical studies, etc. The aim of this paper is to perform a comprehensive survey on the applications of AI in battling against the difficulties the outbreak has caused. Thus we cover every way that AI approaches have been employed and to cover all the research until the writing of this paper. We try organize the works in a way that overall picture is comprehensible. Such a picture, although full of details, is very helpful in understand where AI sits in current pandemonium. We also tried to conclude the paper with ideas on how the problems can be tackled in a better way and provide some suggestions for future works.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohammad-H Tayarani N
- Biocomputation Group, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, United Kingdom
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Golinelli D, Boetto E, Carullo G, Nuzzolese AG, Landini MP, Fantini MP. Adoption of Digital Technologies in Health Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Systematic Review of Early Scientific Literature. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22:e22280. [PMID: 33079693 PMCID: PMC7652596 DOI: 10.2196/22280] [Citation(s) in RCA: 193] [Impact Index Per Article: 48.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2020] [Revised: 07/25/2020] [Accepted: 09/15/2020] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic is favoring digital transitions in many industries and in society as a whole. Health care organizations have responded to the first phase of the pandemic by rapidly adopting digital solutions and advanced technology tools. OBJECTIVE The aim of this review is to describe the digital solutions that have been reported in the early scientific literature to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on individuals and health systems. METHODS We conducted a systematic review of early COVID-19-related literature (from January 1 to April 30, 2020) by searching MEDLINE and medRxiv with appropriate terms to find relevant literature on the use of digital technologies in response to the pandemic. We extracted study characteristics such as the paper title, journal, and publication date, and we categorized the retrieved papers by the type of technology and patient needs addressed. We built a scoring rubric by cross-classifying the patient needs with the type of technology. We also extracted information and classified each technology reported by the selected articles according to health care system target, grade of innovation, and scalability to other geographical areas. RESULTS The search identified 269 articles, of which 124 full-text articles were assessed and included in the review after screening. Most of the selected articles addressed the use of digital technologies for diagnosis, surveillance, and prevention. We report that most of these digital solutions and innovative technologies have been proposed for the diagnosis of COVID-19. In particular, within the reviewed articles, we identified numerous suggestions on the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools for the diagnosis and screening of COVID-19. Digital technologies are also useful for prevention and surveillance measures, such as contact-tracing apps and monitoring of internet searches and social media usage. Fewer scientific contributions address the use of digital technologies for lifestyle empowerment or patient engagement. CONCLUSIONS In the field of diagnosis, digital solutions that integrate with traditional methods, such as AI-based diagnostic algorithms based both on imaging and clinical data, appear to be promising. For surveillance, digital apps have already proven their effectiveness; however, problems related to privacy and usability remain. For other patient needs, several solutions have been proposed, such as telemedicine or telehealth tools. These tools have long been available, but this historical moment may actually be favoring their definitive large-scale adoption. It is worth taking advantage of the impetus provided by the crisis; it is also important to keep track of the digital solutions currently being proposed to implement best practices and models of care in future and to adopt at least some of the solutions proposed in the scientific literature, especially in national health systems, which have proved to be particularly resistant to the digital transition in recent years.
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Affiliation(s)
- Davide Golinelli
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Erik Boetto
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gherardo Carullo
- Department of Italian and Supranational Public Law, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | | | | | - Maria Pia Fantini
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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Wang J, Abu-El-Rub N, Gray J, Pham HA, Zhou Y, Manion FJ, Liu M, Song X, Xu H, Rouhizadeh M, Zhang Y. COVID-19 SignSym: a fast adaptation of a general clinical NLP tool to identify and normalize COVID-19 signs and symptoms to OMOP common data model. ARXIV 2020:arXiv:2007.10286v4. [PMID: 32908948 PMCID: PMC7480086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Revised: 04/07/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world rapidly, infecting millions of people. An efficient tool that can accurately recognize important clinical concepts of COVID-19 from free text in electronic health records (EHRs) will be valuable to accelerate COVID-19 clinical research. To this end, this study aims at adapting the existing CLAMP natural language processing tool to quickly build COVID-19 SignSym, which can extract COVID-19 signs/symptoms and their 8 attributes (body location, severity, temporal expression, subject, condition, uncertainty, negation, and course) from clinical text. The extracted information is also mapped to standard concepts in the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership common data model. A hybrid approach of combining deep learning-based models, curated lexicons, and pattern-based rules was applied to quickly build the COVID-19 SignSym from CLAMP, with optimized performance. Our extensive evaluation using 3 external sites with clinical notes of COVID-19 patients, as well as the online medical dialogues of COVID-19, shows COVID-19 SignSym can achieve high performance across data sources. The workflow used for this study can be generalized to other use cases, where existing clinical natural language processing tools need to be customized for specific information needs within a short time. COVID-19 SignSym is freely accessible to the research community as a downloadable package (https://clamp.uth.edu/covid/nlp.php) and has been used by 16 healthcare organizations to support clinical research of COVID-19.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jingqi Wang
- Melax Technologies, Inc, Houston, Texas, USA
- School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Noor Abu-El-Rub
- Division of Medical Informatics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas, USA
| | - Josh Gray
- Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| | | | - Yujia Zhou
- School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
| | | | - Mei Liu
- Division of Medical Informatics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas, USA
| | - Xing Song
- University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, USA
| | - Hua Xu
- School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Masoud Rouhizadeh
- Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
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Venkatakrishnan AJ, Puranik A, Anand A, Zemmour D, Yao X, Wu X, Chilaka R, Murakowski DK, Standish K, Raghunathan B, Wagner T, Garcia-Rivera E, Solomon H, Garg A, Barve R, Anyanwu-Ofili A, Khan N, Soundararajan V. Knowledge synthesis of 100 million biomedical documents augments the deep expression profiling of coronavirus receptors. eLife 2020; 9:58040. [PMID: 32463365 PMCID: PMC7371427 DOI: 10.7554/elife.58040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2020] [Accepted: 05/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic demands assimilation of all biomedical knowledge to decode mechanisms of pathogenesis. Despite the recent renaissance in neural networks, a platform for the real-time synthesis of the exponentially growing biomedical literature and deep omics insights is unavailable. Here, we present the nferX platform for dynamic inference from over 45 quadrillion possible conceptual associations from unstructured text, and triangulation with insights from single-cell RNA-sequencing, bulk RNA-seq and proteomics from diverse tissue types. A hypothesis-free profiling of ACE2 suggests tongue keratinocytes, olfactory epithelial cells, airway club cells and respiratory ciliated cells as potential reservoirs of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor. We find the gut as the putative hotspot of COVID-19, where a maturation correlated transcriptional signature is shared in small intestine enterocytes among coronavirus receptors (ACE2, DPP4, ANPEP). A holistic data science platform triangulating insights from structured and unstructured data holds potential for accelerating the generation of impactful biological insights and hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | - Xiang Yao
- Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Spring House, United States
| | - Xiaoying Wu
- Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Spring House, United States
| | | | | | - Kristopher Standish
- Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Spring House, United States
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Anuli Anyanwu-Ofili
- Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Spring House, United States
| | - Najat Khan
- Janssen pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Spring House, United States
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Anand P, Puranik A, Aravamudan M, Venkatakrishnan AJ, Soundararajan V. SARS-CoV-2 strategically mimics proteolytic activation of human ENaC. eLife 2020; 9:58603. [PMID: 32452762 PMCID: PMC7343387 DOI: 10.7554/elife.58603] [Citation(s) in RCA: 86] [Impact Index Per Article: 21.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/05/2020] [Accepted: 05/25/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Molecular mimicry is an evolutionary strategy adopted by viruses to exploit the host cellular machinery. We report that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved a unique S1/S2 cleavage site, absent in any previous coronavirus sequenced, resulting in the striking mimicry of an identical FURIN-cleavable peptide on the human epithelial sodium channel α-subunit (ENaC-α). Genetic alteration of ENaC-α causes aldosterone dysregulation in patients, highlighting that the FURIN site is critical for activation of ENaC. Single cell RNA-seq from 66 studies shows significant overlap between expression of ENaC-α and the viral receptor ACE2 in cell types linked to the cardiovascular-renal-pulmonary pathophysiology of COVID-19. Triangulating this cellular characterization with cleavage signatures of 178 proteases highlights proteolytic degeneracy wired into the SARS-CoV-2 lifecycle. Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 into a global pandemic may be driven in part by its targeted mimicry of ENaC-α, a protein critical for the homeostasis of airway surface liquid, whose misregulation is associated with respiratory conditions. Viruses hijack the cellular machinery of humans to infect their cells and multiply. The virus causing the global COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, is no exception. Identifying which proteins in human cells the virus co-opts is crucial for developing new ways to diagnose, prevent and treat COVID-19 infections. SARS-CoV-2 is covered in spike-shaped proteins, which the virus uses to gain entry into cells. First, the spikes bind to a protein called ACE2, which is found on the cells that line the respiratory tract and lungs. SARS-CoV-2 then exploits enzymes called proteases to cut, or cleave, its spikes at a specific site which allows the virus to infiltrate the host cell. Proteases identify which proteins to target based on the sequence of amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – at the cleavage site. However, it remained unclear which human proteases SARS-CoV-2 co-opts and whether its cut site is similar to human proteins. Now, Anand et al. show that the spike proteins on SARS-CoV-2 may have the same sequence of amino acids at its cut site as a human epithelial channel protein called ENaC-α. This channel is important for maintaining the balance of salt and water in many organs including the lungs. Further analyses showed that ENaC-α is often found in the same types of human lung and respiratory tract cells as ACE2. This suggests that SARS-CoV-2 may use the same proteases that cut ENaC-α to get inside human respiratory cells. It is possible that by hijacking the cutting mechanism for ENaC-α, SARS-CoV-2 interferes with the balance of salt and water in the lungs of COVID-19 patients. This may help explain why the virus causes severe respiratory symptoms. However, more studies are needed to confirm that the proteases that cut ENaC-α also cut the spike proteins on SARS-CoV-2, and how this affects the respiratory health of COVID-19 patients.
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