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Background: The differential diagnosis of acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) with acute pulmonary embolism (APE) complications are difficult because of the variability of clinical presentations and the shortage of an unfailing screening biomarkers or instruments., Objective: Aimed to detect and compare the expression of serum microRNAs (miR-1233, miR-134) in AECOPD patients complicated with APE., Patients/methods: Blood samples were collected from 52 AECOPD patients (13 patients with APE complications, 39 patients without APE) and 10 patients with stable COPD. Serum miRNAs expression was detected with real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The levels of plasma D-dimers were determined by detection with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used for evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of the studied miRNAs., Results: According to the Wells score, 42 of the 52 AECOPD patients were unlikely to have APE (≤4 points), whereas the remaining 10 (>4 points) were likely to have APE. There were 4 cases (4/13 30.8%) in the AECOPD combined with APE group with a Wells score of >4 points. The expression levels of miR-1233 and miR-134 in the serum were considerably upregulated in the AECOPD+APE group compared with the AECOPD group and the stable COPD group (P<0.05). The areas under the curve (AUCs) for miR-134 and miR-1233 were, respectively, 0.931 (95% CI 0.863-0.999) (P<0.05) and 0.884 (95% CI 0.79-0.978) (P<0.05) and were higher compared with the AUC for D-dimer of 0.628 (95% CI 0.447-0.809), the AUC for age-adjusted D-dimer of 0.705 (95% CI 0.525-0.885) and the AUC for Wells score of 0.577 (95% CI 0.389-0.765)., Conclusion: Our study indicated that serum miR-1233 and miR-134 have high clinical value in the early diagnosis of AECOPD patients combined with APE, or could be used as potential biomarkers for clinical identification of AECOPD with or without APE complication., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© 2020 Peng et al.)

Background: In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19; previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, which has subsequently affected more than 200 countries worldwide including Europe, North America, Oceania, Africa and other places. The number of infected people is rapidly increasing, while the diagnostic method of COVID-19 is only by nucleic acid testing., Objective: To explain the epidemiological characteristics, clinical features, imaging manifestations and to judge diagnostic value of COVID-19 by analyzing the clinical data of COVID-19 suspected and confirmed patients in a non-outbreak, Shanghai, China. To clarify the early epidemiology and clinical characteristics about COVID-19., Methods: Cross-sectional, single-center case reports of the 86 patients screened at Zhoupu Hospital in Pudong New District, Shanghai, China, from January 23 to February 16, 2020. Epidemiology, demography, clinical, laboratory and chest CTs were collected and analyzed. The screened patients were divided into COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 based on nucleic acid test results., Results: Of the 86 screened patients, 11 were confirmed (12.8%) by nucleic acid testing (mean age 40.73 ± 11.32, 5 males). No significant differences were found in clinical symptoms including fever, cough, dyspnea, sore throat, and fatigue (P > 0.05). No statistical difference was observed in plasma C-reactive protein (CRP) between the two groups (COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 ) of patients (P = 0.402), while the white blood cell count and lymphocyte count of the confirmed patients were slightly lower than those of the suspected patients (P < 0.05). Some non-COVID-19 chest CTs also showed subpleural lesions, such as ground-glass opacities (GGO) combined with bronchiectasis; or halo nodules distributed under the pleura with focal GGO; consolidation of subpleural distribution or combined with air bronchi sign and vascular bundle sign, etc., Conclusion: The early clinical manifestations and imaging findings of COVID-19 are not characteristic in non-outbreak areas. Etiological testing should be performed as early as possible for clinically suspected patients., (© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.)

Pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) is a common clinical problem that is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. We investigated the role of protein C polymorphism in patients with PTE in order to find out the correlation between its polymorphism and the susceptibility of the Chinese population to develop PTE. We used a case-control study design. Sixty-three consecutive patients with PTE were enrolled as the investigated group and 86 healthy people as the control group. Two novel polymorphisms, C/T at the position of 2405 and A/G at the position of 2418in the protein C gene promoter region were detected through PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. The results suggested that the genotype frequencies of the two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) when combined together were not significantly different between the case and control group (P > 0.05). However, the allele frequency of the C2405T SNP was significantly different between the case and control group. The frequency of T allele in the PTE group was higher when compared to the control, whereas the frequency of C allele was lower (P < 0.05). These results suggested that there were six different kinds of genotype distribution (TA-TA, TA-CA, TA-CG, CG-CG, CA-CG, CA-CA) and three different kinds of haplotype (TA, CG, CA). Our result showed that the frequency of the TA haplotype was significantly higher in the patients suffering from PTE (P < 0.05). These results suggest that the two polymorphisms present in the control region of the protein C gene are associated with an increased susceptibility to PTE in the Chinese population. The 2405T allele may be a possible risk factor for the development of PTE, whereas the C allele may probably be a protective factor of PTE Moreover, the TA haplotype may also be associated with an increased risk for developing PTE.