Search results for "SARS-CoV-2"
showing 10 items of 1204 documents
Lead Discovery of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Inhibitors through Covalent Docking-Based Virtual Screening
2021
During almost all 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has constituted the major risk for the worldwide health and economy, propelling unprecedented efforts to discover drugs for its prevention and cure. At the end of the year, these efforts have culminated with the approval of vaccines by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) giving new hope for the future. On the other hand, clinical data underscore the urgent need for effective drugs to treat COVID-19 patients. In this work, we embarked on a virtual screening campaign against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Mpro chymotrypsin-like cysteine pro…
Europe’s War against COVID-19: A Map of Countries’ Disease Vulnerability Using Mortality Indicators
2020
Specific and older age-associated comorbidities increase mortality risk in severe forms of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We matched COVID-19 comorbidities with causes of death in 28 EU countries for the total population and for the population above 65 years and applied a machine-learning-based tree clustering algorithm on shares of death for COVID-19 comorbidities and for influenza and on their growth rates between 2011 and 2016. We distributed EU countries in clusters and drew a map of the EU populations&rsquo
Covid-19 Pandemic: What Changes for Dentists and Oral Medicine Experts? A Narrative Review and Novel Approaches to Infection Containment
2020
The authors performed a narrative review on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- CoronaVirus-2 ( SARS-CoV-2) and all infectious agents with the primary endpoints to illustrate the most accepted models of safety protocols in dentistry and oral medicine, and to propose an easy view of the problem and a comparison (pre- vs post-COVID19) for the most common dental procedures. The outcome is forecast to help dentists to individuate for a given procedure the differences in terms of safety protocols to avoid infectious contagion (by SARS-CoV-2 and others dangerous agents). An investigation was performed on the online databases Pubmed and Scopus using a combination of free words and Medical Subject H…
From virtual to real healing: a critical overview of the therapeutic use of virtual reality to cope with mourning
2021
In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has been effectively employed in several settings, ranging from health care needs to leisure and gaming activities. A new application of virtual stimuli appeared in social media: in the documentary 'I met you' from the South-Korean Munhwa Broadcasting, a mother made the experience of interacting with the avatar of the seven-year-old daughter, who died four years before. We think that this new application of virtual stimuli should open a debate on its possible implications: it represents contents related to grief, a dramatic and yet natural experience, that can have deep psychological impacts on fragile subjects put in virtual environments. In the presen…
A Novel Heuristic Global Algorithm to Predict the COVID-19 Pandemic Trend
2020
SummaryMathematical models are useful tools to predict the course of an epidemic. A heuristic global Gaussian-function-based algorithm for predicting the COVID-19 pandemic trend is proposed for estimating how the temporal evolution of the pandemic develops by predicting daily COVID-19 deaths, for up to 10 days, starting with the day the prediction is made. The validity of the proposed heuristic global algorithm was tested in the case of China (at different temporal stages of the pandemic). The algorithm was used to obtain predictions in six different locations: California, New York, Iran, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the entire United States, and in all cases the prediction was confirmed…
Blood Donations and Transfusions during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain: Impact According to Autonomous Communities and Hospitals
2021
Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a decline in blood donations, between 30% and 70% in some of the most affected countries. In Spain, during the initial eight weeks after the State of Emergency was decreed on 14 March 2020, in the weekly reports of the Health Ministry, an average decrease of 20% was observed between 11 and week 25 compared with the 2018 donation. We aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on blood donations and blood distribution in four autonomous communities, and to explore the evolution of the consumption of blood components (BCs) in ten hospitals of six autonomous communities. We performed a prospective study of grouped cohorts on the donation…
Platinum chloride-based viability RT-qPCR for SARS-CoV-2 detection in complex samples.
2021
Isolation, contact tracing and restrictions on social movement are being globally implemented to prevent and control onward spread of SARS-CoV-2, even though the infection risk modelled on RNA detection by RT-qPCR remains biased as viral shedding and infectivity are not discerned. Thus, we aimed to develop a rapid viability RT-qPCR procedure to infer SARS-CoV-2 infectivity in clinical specimens and environmental samples. We screened monoazide dyes and platinum compounds as viability molecular markers on five SARS-CoV-2 RNA targets. A platinum chloride-based viability RT-qPCR was then optimized using genomic RNA, and inactivated SARS-CoV-2 particles inoculated in buffer, stool, and urine. Ou…
The patient-doctor relationship: new insights in light of the current Ministerial recommendations regarding Phase 2 of the COVID-19 pandemic
2020
Following the publication of the italian Ministerial recommendations relating to dentistry in Phase 2 of the coViD-19 pandemic (focusing on operational protocols for all dental staff), we believe that the patient/dentist relationship should increasingly take into account the heightened fears and anxious thoughts of patients. this particularly regards patients who are about to undergo dental work. Moreover, dentists should also pay close attention to recent events, which have determined the new recommendations regarding SarS-coV-2 biocontainment. Furthermore, the authors of this paper consider it appropriate to make suggestions and develop interventionist techniques regarding the interface w…
Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation in East-Central Europe: insights from the Baltic states
2021
The aim of this paper is to contribute to advancing the academic debate on dependent financialisation through a focus on East-Central Europe. In doing so, the paper identifies the role of Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation using the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as case studies. The paper makes two main contributions to the literature on dependent financialisation. First, it argues that, through the establishment of 'financial chains', dependent financialisation creates asymmetric co-dependencies and bilateral risks between the 'dependent' economies in the (semi-)periphery and the financial actors in core countries. While the (semi-)peripheral economi…
Bioactive pyrrole-based compounds with target selectivity
2020
The discovery of novel synthetic compounds with drug-like properties is an ongoing challenge in medicinal chemistry. Natural products have inspired the synthesis of compounds for pharmaceutical application, most of which are based on N-heterocyclic motifs. Among these, the pyrrole ring is one of the most explored heterocycles in drug discovery programs for several therapeutic areas, confirmed by the high number of pyrrole-based drugs reaching the market. In the present review, we focused on pyrrole and its hetero-fused derivatives with anticancer, antimicrobial, and antiviral activities, reported in the literature between 2015 and 2019, for which a specific target was identified, being resp…