Search

Introduction. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared as a new illness in December 2019 in Hubei Province, China and considered a pandemic by the WHO Director General`s opening remarks at the related media briefing in March 2020. This illness is caused by a virus called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 involves multiple organ impairments and lung injury is one of the most common lesions of this disease. Although it has been studied for nine months, our understanding of this disease is still incomplete, including in terms of sequelae and long-term outcomes. A large number of patients are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but only in some patients the disease has progressed rapidly to respiratory failure requiring hospitalization or treatment in intensive care units. The most common complications noticed in severe cases is acute respiratory distress syndrome with a consecutive respiratory failure. Materials and method. The detailed evaluation of the patient, the methodological and fundamental elements of the pulmonary rehabilitation adapted to the patient are interventions which have an extremely important role and application in COVID-19 treatment, in mitigating dyspnoea symptoms, anxiety relief, reducing other possible complications, minimizing disability, maintaining functionality, all in order to increase the patient quality of life. As for October 2020 and still ongoing, a number of approximately fifty patients from both the Intensive Care Unit and clinical wards of "Prof. Dr. Matei Bals" National Institute of Infectious Disease have been evaluated by the physician and underwent a physical therapy program, assisted by the physiotherapist. Results. Lung rehabilitation should be considered when possible and safe during treatment of patients with COVID-19 and may include rehabilitative nursing, specific respiratory kinesiotherapy and for increasing general effort capacity and mobility (see further for methodological details). From the physician's point of view, it is extremely important to carefully conduct the anamnestic process and evaluation, to adjust the program to each individual, to monitor oxygen saturation, blood pressure levels, pulse and temperature throughout the exercises. Every increment or decrement of these parameters, onset of cough or fatigability, must end the rehabilitation process. Conclusions. Like for all the chronic pulmonary patients in the cases where COVID-19 resulted in respiratory sequels, specific and connected general physical and kinesiological rehabilitative interventions are necessary and useful. The methodology must be thoroughly case by case elaborated and applied considering also the epidemiologic related concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sulfur mustard (2, 2’-dichloroethyl-sulfide, HD) is an alkylating agent and a powerful vesicant, which was widely imposed and caused the bulk of injuries and deaths in World War Ⅰ and Iran-Iraq War. Since World War Ⅱ, many casualties have been caused by the chemical weapons containing HD abandoned by Japanese in China. It still represents potential threat to military and civilian population. It’s very important to study reliable bioanalytical methods for detecting HD exposure. HD reacts with histidine residues of hemoglobin producing the HD adduct which has been used as a biomarker for retrospective detection of HD exposure because of its long half-life (about 120 days). A novel method based on the HD-hemoglobin adduct for qualitative and quantitative detection of trace HD exposure was developed. The HD-hemoglobin was isolated from blood through centrifugation and hemolyzation in water. Then the heme was removed with acidic acetone to obtain the HD-globin. HD-globin adduct was digested with pronase, purified by PPL solid phase extraction following benzyl chloroformate (Cbz-Cl) derivatization, and analyzed with ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). Upon optimization, the digestion was performed at 55 °C for 10.0 h. The PPL loading samples was washed with 3.0 mL 5% methanol solution and eluted with 1.0 mL 50% methanol solution. The derivatization time and temperature were 30 min and 4 °C, respectively. With 2-chloroethyl ethyl sulfide spiked hemoglobin solution serving as internal standard (ISTD), the method was found to be linear between 10.0 and 1 000 μg/L HD exposure (R2>0.997) with precision of ≤12.4% and accuracy ranged between 89.8% and 113%. In spite of a shorter sample treatment time (compared with the acid hydrolysis, which needed reflux in hydrochloric acid at 110 °C for 24 h), the limit of detection (LOD) was 10.0 μg/L (S/N>5) which was 150 times lower than that by the acid hydrolysis in a previous article. Furthermore, two transitions were more beneficial to retrospective detection for trace HD exposure than only one transition used in the previous article. This method showed great specificity with absent interference, stable ratio of confirmation transition, quantitative transition, mild sample preparation conditions and simplified operations. This study provides a method for the retrospective detection of trace-HD exposure, which is beneficial to the official Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) proficiency tests. Furthermore, this method can provide evidence for allegations of the use of HD, treatments of the persons exposed to HD and the study of toxication mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Knowledge of the states of the contents in chemical munitions that Japanese Imperial Forces abandoned at the end of World War II in Japan and China is gravely lacking. To unearth and recover these chemical weapons and detoxify the contents safely, it is essential to establish analytical procedures to definitely determine the CWA contents. We established such a procedure and applied it to the analysis of chemicals in the abandoned shells. Yellow shells are known to contain sulfur mustard, lewisite, or a mixture of both. Lewisite was analyzed without thiol derivatization, because it and its decomposition products yield the same substances in the derivatization. Analysis using our new procedure showed that both mustard and lewisite remained as the major components after the long abandonment of nearly 60 years. The content of mustard was 43% and that of lewisite 55%. The viscous material found was suggested to be mostly oligomers of mustard. Comparison of the components in the Yellow agents with mustard recovered in both Japan and China showed a difference in the impurities between the CWAs produced by the former Imperial navy and those by the former Imperial army. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]