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To investigate the value of the combined detection of the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and C-reactive protein level (CRP) in the diagnosis of COVID-19. A total of 191 patients with COVID-19 were recruited at the Third Hospital of Wuhan from 21 January 2020 to 20 February 2020. Fifty healthy volunteers were randomly selected as the control group. Age, gender, white blood cell count (WBC), CRP, lymphocyte percentage, and NLR were extracted. Quantitative clinical characteristics and laboratory values were compared between groups. Risk factors and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for COVID-19 were analyzed. We found that the NLR and CRP were higher, while the lymphocyte percentage was lower in patients with COVID-19 than in healthy controls. Among patients confirmed to have COVID-19, the NLR and CRP of the moderate group were lower than those of severely ill patients (severe, critical and death groups), and the lymphocyte percentage of the moderate group was higher than that of the critical and death group. There were no significant differences in WBC among all groups. Logistic regression analysis showed that the NLR, CRP, and lymphocyte percentage were independent risk factors for COVID-19. The AUC of the combined determination of NLR and CRP was 0.863, which was higher than that of NLR, CRP, WBC, and lymphocyte percentage (AUC: 0.835, 0.775, 0.416, and 0.749, respectively). Our results showed that the NLR and CRP were independent risk factors for COVID-19, and the combined detection of the NLR and CRP showed improved diagnostic performance for COVID-19.

Background: To investigate the effects of interleukin 18 (IL-18) on diabetic retinopathy (DR) of type 2 diabetic patients, the contents of IL-18 were measured in serum of 206 case subjects with type 2 diabetes and 40 case subjects without diabetes as control. Methods: According to the degree of DR, the diabetic patients were further divided into three groups: non-diabetic retinopathy (NDR, n=69), non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR, n = 52) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR, n=85). Results: Unlike previous reports, we didn’t found a significant increase in serum IL-18 level in diabetic patients (mean ± SD are 107.4±36.6 and 112.5±32.0 pg/ml for control and type 2 diabetes patients respectively, p > 0.05). Further analysis also failed to found any significant increase of serum IL-18 in patients with NDR, NPDR or PDR (113.0±32.1, 110.8±31.4 and 114.5±33.4 pg/ml respectively) when compared with control (for all values, p > 0.05). Real-time qPCR suggests that the expression of IL-18 mRNA in type 2 diabetic patients with DR was comparable to that of controls (p>0.05). Interestingly, there was a significant positive correlation between levels of serum IL -18 and the amount of fasting blood glucose (FBG, r=0.15，p=0.03) and that Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) was relatively higher in diabetic patients than in control subjects (p

Intractable functional constipation is a common gastrointestinal disorder that features persistent difficult defecation, reduced bowel movements, or a feeling of incomplete defecation. Despite many therapeutic approaches, there has not been an established standard treatment protocol. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), an innovative therapy that was introduced recently, has been preliminarily shown to have good effects and is expected to have good prospects. However, nursing is also of great importance during the process of FMT. An innovative nursing care protocol is combined with FMT, with a view to improving the clinical symptoms and quality of life of patients with intractable functional dyspepsia. This case-based study addresses the effects of nursing interventions used during the treatment of one patient with intractable functional constipation who received FMT.

To investigate the relationship of femoral head coverage (FHC) with Graf’s classification for diagnosis of developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) and its role in evaluating hip stability. A total of 4222 hips were screened ultrasonographically with Graf’s and Harcke’s methods. The stability of hips was analyzed using the difference between FHCs at neutral and flexion positions (FHC-D). (1) For the non-dislocated hips, the mean value of FHC at the neutral position was 59.4%, which was significantly greater than 55.0% of FHC at the flexion position (p

Coiled tubing is widely used in oil drilling and production operations. However, extreme high stress variation of coiled tubing during the processes of pulling out, rolling in the reel, and passing through the gooseneck makes coiled tubing fatigue failure easily. Thus, it is of great importance to increase coiled tubing fatigue life. This paper introduces the new technology to improve the fatigue life of coiled tubing—the prebending coiled tubing technology; proceeds mechanical analysis and strength check of the prebending coiled tubing; analyzes stress cycling characteristics of the prebending coiled tubing in field operations; establishes the fatigue life prediction model of prebending coiled tubing under arbitrary cycle, on the basis of fatigue experimental data under the symmetric cycle and the pulsating cycle, with fitting and interpolation method; makes simple comparison of the fatigue life of the prebending coiled tubing with that of the straight coiled tubing. Preliminary calculations show that the prebending coiled tubing technology may improve the fatigue life of coiled tubing multiple times.