A novel coronavirus pneumonia, first identified in Wuhan City and referred to as COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, has been quickly spreading to other cities and countries. To control the epidemic, the Chinese government mandated a quarantine of the Wuhan city on January 23, 2020. To explore the effectiveness of the quarantine of the Wuhan city against this epidemic, transmission dynamics of COVID-19 have been estimated. A well-mixed "susceptible exposed infectious recovered" (SEIR) compartmental model was employed to describe the dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic based on epidemiological characteristics of individuals, clinical progression of COVID-19, and quarantine intervention measures of the authority. Considering infected individuals as contagious during the latency period, the well-mixed SEIR model fitting results based on the assumed contact rate of latent individuals are within 6-18, which represented the possible impact of quarantine and isolation interventions on disease infections, whereas other parameter were suppose as unchanged under the current intervention. The present study shows that, by reducing the contact rate of latent individuals, interventions such as quarantine and isolation can effectively reduce the potential peak number of

In this study we report on the clinical and autoimmune characteristics of severe and critical novel coronavirus pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The clinical, autoimmune, and laboratory characteristics of 21 patients who had laboratory-confirmed severe and critical cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from the intensive care unit of the Huangshi Central Hospital, Hubei Province, China, were investigated. A total of 21 patients (13 men and 8 women), including 8 (38.1%) severe cases and 13 (61.9%) critical cases, were enrolled. Cough (90.5%) and fever (81.0%) were the dominant symptoms, and most patients (76.2%) had at least one coexisting disorder on admission. The most common characteristics on chest computed tomography were ground-glass opacity (100%) and bilateral patchy shadowing (76.2%). The most common findings on laboratory measurement were lymphocytopenia (85.7%) and elevated levels of C-reactive protein (94.7%) and interleukin-6 (89.5%). The prevalence of anti-52 kDa SSA/Ro antibody, anti-60 kDa SSA/Ro antibody, and antinuclear antibody was 20%, 25%, and 50%, respectively. We also retrospectively analyzed the clinical and laboratory data from 21 severe and critical cases of COVID-19. Autoimmune phenomena exist in COVID-19 subjects, and the present results provide the rationale for a strategy of preventing immune dysfunction and optimal immunosuppressive therapy.

Imatinib mesylate (IM), a targeted competitive inhibitor of the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase, has revolutionized the clinical treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). However, resistance and intolerance are still a challenge in the treatment of CML. Autophagy has been proposed to play a role in IM resistance. To investigate the anti-leukemic activity of specific and potent autophagy inhibitor-1 (spautin-1) in CML, we detected its synergistic effect with IM in K562 and CML cells. Our results showed that spautin-1 markedly inhibited IM-induced autophagy in CML cells by downregulating Beclin-1. Spautin-1 enhanced IM-induced CML cell apoptosis by reducing the expression of the anti-apoptotic proteins Mcl-1 and Bcl-2. We further demonstrated that the pro-apoptotic activity of spautin-1 was associated with activation of GSK3β, an important downstream effector of PI3K/AKT. The findings indicate that the autophagy inhibitor spautin-1 enhances IM-induced apoptosis by inactivating PI3K/AKT and activating downstream GSK3β, leading to downregulation of Mcl-1 and Bcl-2, which represents a promising approach to improve the efficacy of IM in the treatment of patients with CML.