Since the sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 , it has rapidly evolved into a momentous global health concern. Due to the lack of constructive information on the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and specific treatment, it highlights the importance of early diagnosis and timely treatment.In this study, 11 key blood indices were extracted through random forest algorithm to build the final assistant discrimination tool from 49 clinical available blood test data which were derived by commercial blood test equipments. The method presented robust outcome to accurately identify COVID-19 from a variety of suspected patients with similar CT information or similar symptoms, with accuracy of 0.9795 and 0.9697 for the cross-validation set and test set, respectively. The tool also demonstrated its outstanding performance on an external validation set that was completely independent of the modeling process, with sensitivity, specificity, and overall accuracy of 0.9512, 0.9697, and 0.9595, respectively. Besides, 24 samples from overseas infected patients with COVID-19 were used to make an in-depth clinical assessment with accuracy of 0.9167. After multiple verification, the reliability and repeatability of the tool has been fully evaluated, and it has the potential to develop into an emerging technology to identify COVID-19 and lower the burden of global public health. The : medRxiv preprint proposed tool is well-suited to carry out preliminary assessment of suspected patients and help them to get timely treatment and quarantine suggestion. The assistant tool is now available online at

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BackgroundInvestigations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis genetic diversity in China have indicated a significant regional distribution. The aim of this study was to characterize the genotypes of clinical M. tuberculosis isolates obtained from Gansu, which has a special geographic location in China.Methodology/Principal FindingsA total of 467 clinical M. tuberculosis strains isolated in Gansu Province were genotyped by 15-locus mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units–variable number tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTR) and spoligotyping. The results showed that 445 isolates belonged to six known spoligotype lineages, whereas 22 isolates were unknown. The Beijing genotype was the most prevalent (87.58%, n = 409), while the shared type 1 was the dominant genotype (80.94%, n = 378). The second most common lineage was the T lineage, with 25 isolates (5.35%), followed by the H lineage with 5 isolates (1.07%), the MANU family (0.64%, 3 isolates), the U family (0.43%, 2 isolates) and the CAS lineage with 1 isolate (0.21%). By using the VNTR15China method, we observed 15 groups and 228 genotypes among the 467 isolates. We found no association between the five larger groups (including the Beijing genotype) and sex, age, or treatment status, and there was no noticeable difference in the group analysis in different areas. In the present study, seven of the 15 MIRU-VNTR loci were highly or moderately discriminative according to their Hunter-Gaston discriminatory index.Conclusions/SignificanceThe Beijing genotype is the predominant genotype in Gansu province. We confirm that VNTR15China is suitable for typing Beijing strains in China and that it has a better discriminatory power than spoligotyping. Therefore, the use of both methods is the most suitable for genotyping analysis of M. tuberculosis.

Background The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has quickly spread worldwide since its outbreak in December 2019. One of the primary measures for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection is an accurate assay for its diagnosis. SARS-CoV-2 real-time PCR kits suffer from some limitations, including false-negative results in the clinic. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of a rapid antibody test kit for COVID-19 diagnosis. Methods The nuclear capsid protein (N) and spike protein 1 (S1) fragments of SARS-CoV-2 were expressed in Escherichia coli, and rapid antibody-based tests for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection were developed. To evaluate their clinical applications, the serum from COVID-19 patients, suspected COVID-19 patients, recovering COVID-19 patients, patients with general fever or pulmonary infection, doctors and nurses who worked at the fever clinic, and health professionals was analyzed by the rapid antibody test kits. The serum from patients infected with Mycoplasma pneumoniae and patients with respiratory tract infection was further analyzed to test its cross-reactivity with other respiratory pathogens. Results A 47 kDa N protein and 67 kDa S1 fragment of SARS-CoV-2 were successfully expressed, purified, and renatured. The rapid antibody test with recombinant N protein showed higher positive rate than the rapid IgM antibody test with recombinant S1 protein. Clinical evaluation showed that the rapid antibody test kit with recombinant N protein had 88.56 % analytical sensitivity and 97.42 % specificity for COVID-19 patients, 53.48 % positive rate for suspected COVID-19 patients, 57.14 % positive rate for recovering COVID-19 patients, and 0.5−0.8 % cross-reactivity with other respiratory pathogens. The analytical sensitivity of the kit did not significantly differ in COVID-19 patients with different disease courses (p < 0.01). Conclusions The rapid antibody test kit with recombinant N protein has high specificity and analytical sensitivity, and can be used for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection combined with RT-PCR.

Background: Antituberculosis drug-induced liver injury (ATDILI) is increasing globally and, hence, it is crucial to predict its risk in the clinical management of antituberculosis therapy. As a major antioxidant, superoxide dismutase (SOD) is mainly responsible for providing defence against oxidative stress, which is involved in ATDILI. The present study aimed to investigate the associations between polymorphisms in SOD genes, including Cu/ZnSOD (SOD1), mitochondrial manganese SOD (MnSOD or SOD2) and extracellular SOD (SOD3), as well as the susceptibility to ATDILI in a Chinese Han population. Methods:In total, 1060 Chinese Han subjects highly suspected to have tuberculosis (TB) were prospectively enrolled from West China Hospital of Sichuan University.Overall, 746 subjects comprising 118 ATDILI and 628 ATD-tolerant TB patients were eligible and were genotyped for seven single-nucleotide polymorphisms in three SOD genes (SOD1: rs4816407 and rs1041740; SOD2: rs4880; SOD3: rs699473, rs2536512, rs2855262 and rs8192290). Results:Logistic regression analysis showed that none of the seven genetic variants in the three SOD genes were significantly associated with susceptibility to ATDILI in the Chinese Han population after Bonferroni correction, except for a potential association for the SOD2 rs4880 A>G (G allele, p = 0.190, odds ratio = 1.53, 95% confidence interval = 1.05-2.23; GG genotype, p = 0.155). Conclusions:The promising application of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the SOD1, SOD2 and SOD3 genes as genetic markers for ATDILI is challenged, and further studies are needed with larger sample sizes and different ethnicities, especially for SOD2 rs4880.