Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is behaviorally defined by social and communication impairments and restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. There is currently no biomarkers that can help in the diagnosis. Several studies suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction is commonly involved in ASD pathophysiology, but standard mitochondrial biomarkers are thought to be very variable. In the present study we examine a wide variety of plasma biomarkers of mitochondrial metabolism and the related abnormalities of oxidative stress and apoptosis in 41 ASD patients assessed for ASD severity using the Childhood Autism Rating Scales and 41 non-related age and sex matched healthy controls. Our findings confirm previous studies indicating abnormal mitochondrial and related biomarkers in children with ASD including pyruvate, creatine kinase, Complex 1, Glutathione S-Transferase, glutathione and Caspase 7. As a novel finding, we report that lactate dehydrogenase is abnormal in children with ASD. We also identified that only the most severe children demonstrated abnormalities in Complex 1 activity and Glutathione S-Transferase. Additionally, we find that several biomarkers could be candidates for differentiating children with ASD and typically developing children, including Caspase 7, gluthatione and Glutathione S-Transferase by themselves and lactate dehydrogenase and Complex I when added to other biomarkers in combination. Caspase 7 was the most discriminating biomarker between ASD patients and healthy controls suggesting its potential use as diagnostic marker for the early recognition of ASD pathophysiology. This study confirms that several mitochondrial biomarkers are abnormal in children with ASD and suggest that certain mitochondrial biomarkers can differentiate between ASD and typically developing children, making them possibly useful as a tool to diagnosis ASD and identify ASD subgroups.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-behavioral syndrome with a broad spectrum of different mechanisms and etiologies that are caused by abnormal brain development. To date, no highly reliable and effective diagnostic biomarker to assess ASD is available so far. The present study investigated the predictivity potential of some suggested markers in ASD diagnosis focusing onto the relative ratios of several plasma biomarkers of electron transport chain function, and mitochondrial metabolism in 41 patients with ASD evaluated for behavior deficits measured using Childhood Autism Rating Scales (CARS). The control matched for further 41 healthy subjects. The relation of these relative ratios to ASD severity was also examined, as well as their ability to distinguish ASD children from neurotypical children. All predictive ratios were found to be markedly altered and correlated in ASD patients. However, no ratio was connected with autism severity. Interestingly, MRCC-I/caspase-7, GSH/GST, and MRCC-I/COQ10 were the most distinctive relative ratios between neurotypical controls and ASD patients and may thereby be useful biomarkers for early diagnosis of ASD. Overall, this investigation proves that relative ratios of numerous mitochondrial biomarkers might be predictive and efficient to differentiate between neurotypical children and ASD.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is emerging contagious pneumonia due to the new Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It initially appeared in Wuhan China in December 2019 then rapidly spread worldwide and became a pandemic. For the time being, there is no specific therapeutic treatment for this disease. Herein, the "state-of-the-art" of treatment modalities was systematically reviewed and ultimately a practical therapeutic algorithm for the COVID-19 management was proposed. The systematic review was performed by using published articles retrieved from Science Direct, MEDLINE, and Scopus databases concerning this topic. Among 1060 articles collected from the different databases, 19 publications were studied in-depth and incorporated in this review. The most three frequently used medications for the treatment of COVID-19 was: the available anti-viral drugs (n= 9), the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine (n = 8), and the passive antibody transfer therapy (n = 2). Among all treatment modalities, antimalarial hydroxychloroquine ranked the highest cure rate. Therefore, this drug is considered as the first‐line of COVID-19 treatment. The second‐line treatment includes the lopinavir/ritonavir drugs combined with interferon β-1b and ribavirin. Finally, the third‐line treatments include the remdesivir drug and passive antibody transfer therapy. However, our review emphasis the urgent need for adequately designed randomized controlled trials, enabling a more significant comparison between the most used treatment modalities.

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Due to the massive impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic worldwide, the accurate and early diagnosis and isolation of infected individuals remains the main way of rapidly curtailing the extension of the disease. The increasing incidence of mutations in the virus RNA sequence represents the principal challenge for the use of molecular approaches for COVID-19 diagnosis. Additionally, because severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spreads differently to that of its Coronaviridae counterparts, unconventional strategies and diagnostic algorithms must be utilized and comprehensively expanded. Therefore, in this study, we sought to conduct a detailed in-depth investigation using many scientific interfaces to i) determine the fastest, most cost-effective, and most comprehensive diagnostic techniques, and ii) identify the proper specimens used for SARS-CoV-2 detection. To accomplish that, we reviewed previous studies investigated for the diagnosis of COVID-19. These strategies are organized to help health professionals and policymakers to quickly choose and apply the appropriate diagnostic approaches.