Although the COVID-19 outbreak initially mainly affected highly urbanized settings, eventually it will reach rural and remote populations resulting in even worse outcomes due to the lack of access to testing, health care and slower implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions. Here we describe the containment efforts in rural China.

AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) serves as a “supermetabolic regulator” that helps maintain cellular energy homeostasis. However, the role of AMPK in glucose metabolism reprogramming in lung cancer remains unclear. Here, our study shows that low AMPK expression correlates with metastasis and clinicopathologic parameters of non–small‐cell lung cancer. Low AMPK significantly enhances the Warburg effect in HBE and A549 cells, which in turn induces the expression of mesenchymal markers and enhances their invasion and migration. At the mechanistic level, low AMPK up‐regulates HK2 expression and glycolysis levels through HDAC4 and HDAC5. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that low AMPK‐induced metabolism can promote epithelial‐mesenchymal transition progression in normal bronchial epithelial cells and lung cancer cells, and increase the risk for tumour metastasis.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is currently not under control. We aimed to assess whether there are differences in clinical manifestations between COVID-19 patients from the East (East and South-East Asian countries including China, South Korea, and Thailand) and the West (North American, European, and Middle East countries, including the United States, Italy, France, and Iran). For this meta-analysis, we searched for eligible studies about COVID-19 in three databases: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library. Studies were divided into two cohorts for analysis: the East and the West. Stata 13.1 software was used for the meta-analysis. Of the 1527 studies initially identified by the literature search, 169 full-text articles were retrieved and screened for eligibility. Fifty-seven of these, describing 19,353 patients, were deemed eligible for inclusion. Of these, 45 studies with 8416 patients were from the East while 12 studies with 10,937 patients were from the West. The results indicated that the incidences of cough, headache, dizziness, nasal congestion, and digestive symptoms in COVID-19 patients from the East were lower than those in the West. The laboratory data showed that there were no significant differences in the levels of lymphocytes, leukocytes, C-reactive protein, and platelet counts between the two groups. In addition, our results also showed that the incidence of cardiac and kidney injury, as well as increased levels of creatinine, alanine transaminase, and aspartate transaminase, were significantly higher in patients from the West than from the East. Our meta-analysis indicated that there are differences in the clinical manifestations of COVID-19 in patients from the East and the West. COVID-19 patients from the West appear to suffer more severe liver, kidney, and heart damage due to SARS-CoV-2.