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Introduction: To elucidate factors associated with severe disease in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia complicated with diabetes mellitus. Methods: Among patients with COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalized from January to September 2021, 100 patients with diabetes were included in the study. Patients in the intensive care unit admission or in-hospital death category were defined as the severe group (26 patients), and the other patients as the moderate group (74 patients). Comparisons were made between the two groups. Medical histories were extracted from the medical records, and statistical analysis was performed. Results: Patients were 62.1 ± 13.0 years of age, 70 % male, 48 % aged 65 years and more, and HbA1c was 7.72 ± 1.51 %. The severe group had significantly higher blood glucose level, CRP, WBC, and LDH on admission. Serum albumin level was significantly lower in the severe group and was significantly negatively correlated with number of days on oxygen administration (r = 0.447) and maximal oxygen concentration (r = 0.561). Multiple logistic regression analysis with severity of illness as the objective variable showed that high CRP and low albumin levels on admission, and older age were independently associated. Conclusions: Low albumin levels on admission may be an indicator of severe disease in patients with diabetes.

The article describes a multi-sensory dataset related to the Activities of Daily Living (ADL). These are the activities that contribute to an assessment of the overall status of elderly or people with special needs, possibly suffering from mild cognitive impairments. Typical basic ADLs include walking, such postural transitions as getting up or sitting down, as well as behaviours related to feeding, such as drinking or eating with knife and fork, or personal hygiene, e.g., teeth brushing. The collection process adopted for building this dataset considers nine ADL-related activities, which have been performed in different locations and involving the usage of both left and right arms. The dataset acquisition involved 10 volunteers performing 186 ADL instances, for a grand total of over 1860 examples. The dataset contains data from six 9-axis Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), worn by each volunteer (two for each arm, one on the back and one on the right thigh). The dataset features an accurate data labelling done via manual annotation performed thanks to videos recorded by an RGB camera. The videos recorded during the experiments have been used only for labelling purposes, and they are not published.

Small cell carcinoma in the ureter is extremely rare, with few cases reported in the literature. The current report describes the case of a 63-year-old man who presented with right-side back pain. A mass was identified in the right ureter. A nephroureterectomy was performed. Subsequent microscopic examination revealed that the mass comprised a monotonous population of small cells and that the carcinoma cells were positive for cluster of AE1/AE3 and synaptophysin. The tumor was diagnosed as a ureteral small cell carcinoma. Adjuvant chemotherapy was administered with 80 mg/m2 intravenous cisplatin on day 1 and 100 mg/m2 etoposide on days 1–3, every 21 days for 2 cycles. The patient has remained disease-free 6 months after surgery. Keywords: Small cell carcinoma, Ureteral cancer

Oxidative stress is implicated in various human diseases and conditions, such as a neurodegeneration, which is the major symptom of vitamin B12 deficiency, although the underlying disease mechanisms associated with vitamin B12 deficiency are poorly understood. Vitamin B12 deficiency was found to significantly increase cellular H2O2 and NO content in Caenorhabditis elegans and significantly decrease low molecular antioxidant [reduced glutathione (GSH) and L-ascorbic acid] levels and antioxidant enzyme (superoxide dismutase and catalase) activities, indicating that vitamin B12 deficiency induces severe oxidative stress leading to oxidative damage of various cellular components in worms. An NaCl chemotaxis associative learning assay indicated that vitamin B12 deficiency did not affect learning ability but impaired memory retention ability, which decreased to approximately 58% of the control value. When worms were treated with 1 mmol/L GSH, L-ascorbic acid, or vitamin E for three generations during vitamin B12 deficiency, cellular malondialdehyde content as an index of oxidative stress decreased to the control level, but the impairment of memory retention ability was not completely reversed (up to approximately 50%). These results suggest that memory retention impairment formed during vitamin B12 deficiency is partially attributable to oxidative stress. Keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans, Cobalamin, Homocysteine, Methionine synthase, Oxidative stress, Vitamin B12

Background and Objectives: Vancomycin (VAN) is one of therapeutic agents for severe infections, and its efficacy and safety are subject to therapeutic drug monitoring. However, there is a lack of data regarding the administration of VAN to low birth weight (LBW) infants. This presents a challenge to ensure optimal dosing and maximize the benefits of VAN therapy in this specialized patients., Materials and Methods: VAN serum samples were collected through opportunistic sampling for clinical use. Population Pharmacokinetics (PopPK) analysis was conducted with a one-compartment model in a nonlinear mixed-effects model using Phoenix NLME (Certara ver.8.4). We compared the final model with the 12 previously reported PopPK models., Results: A total of 106 samples from 25 patients were obtained to establish the PopPK model for LBW infants. We successfully developed one-compartment PopPK model using Phoenix NLME based on Japanese LBW infants receiving VAN with body weights of less than 2,500 g. The covariates in our PopPK model are postmenstrual age, body weight, and serum creatinine for clearance and postnatal age for volume of distribution. A comparison of the goodness-of-fit metrics indicated that our PopPK model achieved better prediction accuracy for VAN blood concentrations, as indicated by the lower values of these metrics., Conclusion: We successfully established a PopPK model incorporating PNA and PMA as new covariates. By addressing the issue of data scarcity in LBW infants, our study provides insights and strategies to manage VAN therapy in LBW infants, thus optimizing its effectiveness and safety., (Copyright © 2024 Japanese Society of Chemotherapy, Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases, and Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)