Archives of Medical Case Reports

Babesia is a single celled protozoan parasite which may be transmitted through the bite of an infected tick, blood transfusion and/ or maternal-fetal transmission. We describe the case of a woman previously treated for Lyme disease and babesiosis who relapsed with severe malaria-like symptoms during the 3rd trimester of two consecutive pregnancies.

Wound healing is a dynamic process whereby cellular structures and the tissue layers are reconstructed. Adult wound healing can be categorized into three stages: inflammatory phase, proliferative phase, and remodelling phase. Blood cells like macrophages, neutrophils, extracellular matrix and mediators, various proteins, and various genes play an important role in these phases.

Fluoropyrimidines compose the backbone of regimens to treat many common solid tumors, including gastrointestinal (GI), breast and head/neck. As we continue to use these agents routinely, recognition of rare but real toxicities, such as cardiotoxicity, has also improved. The treatment options for patients who have encountered fluoropyrimidine-induced cardiotoxicity are limited as many anti-angiogenic drugs also pose a cardiac risk.

Reverse triggering is the ventilator-triggered muscular effort, related to entrainment, particularly seen among sedated patient. The reverse triggering frequently caused double triggering/double cycling, with increased tidal volume and transpulmonary pressure. In our monitored patients we have observed different types of double triggering caused by asynchrony like to reverse triggering, for which we adopted the term “pseudo-reverse-triggering”.

Background: The precise role of corticosteroids for treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is unclear due to lack of randomized trials. Objective: To review the therapeutic value of corticosteroids for treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 with more emphasis on randomized trials. Methods: English literature search of electronic databases supplemented by manual search up to June 29, 2020. Search terms included corticosteroids, COVID-19, dexamethasone, methylprednisolone, hydrocortisone, mortality, safety. Randomized trials were the main focus of research, but observational studies were also reviewed.

Since December 2019, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused by 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has resulted in 89,000 cases of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), formerly known as Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) in China, including 2,450 deaths.

After one year in a pandemic, we mourn the loss of over half a million lives in the United States, and over four million worldwide, and remain concerned over the challenges facing the families of 35 million people in the United States, and 200 million worldwide, who have suffered from cases of COVID-19.

Immune thrombocytopenia is an autoimmune disease predominantly caused by autoantibody mediated platelet and megakaryocyte destruction and or dysfunction, which leads to low platelet counts and risk of bleeding. Currently prognostic biomarkers are underdeveloped and there lacks a gold-standard for therapeutics, which leaves an inexplicable refractory subset of patients which are clinically challenging.

At the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic, we proposed to use hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and intranasal interferon (IFN) a-2b spray to prevent SARS-CoV-2. Since then, clinical trials testing these two drugs separately for the treatment and prophylaxis have been reported. A consensus is forming that HCQ and IFNs are not effective in treating severe Covid-19. However, the pathogenesis of Covid-19 suggests that early intervention could reduce the infection and prevent the progression from mild to severe Covid-19.

Advances in oncology such as better access to health care system, earlier cancer diagnosis and new chemotherapies have led to longer survival of oncologic patients over the last decades. However, this population is vulnerable to cardiovascular drug-related adverse events like cardiomyopathy, which leads to heart failure and impairs survival and quality of life.

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-associated cardiotoxicity is a rare immune-related adverse event with high mortality. In recent years, more and more reports were reported. It is urgent to improve understanding and management. Cardiac toxicity often occurs in the early stage after ICI treatment, and its clinical manifestations are diverse and nonspecific, and its pathogenesis is still unclear. Among them, the incidence of immune myocarditis is more than 1%, which can be manifested as fulminant, acute or chronic.

With increasing rates of obesity, rates of type 2 diabetes and diabetic complications are expected to rise exponentially over the next few decades (American Diabetic Association). A key feature of type 2 diabetes is a resistance to insulin. Insulin signaling is key to a number of physiological processes, including glucose metabolism, cell growth, general gene expression, and apoptosis.

The prevalence of diabetes in COVID-19 patients ranges from 5.3% to 58% representing the second comorbidity after hypertension. However, when adjusted for age, diabetes prevalence among COVID-19 patients is similar to its prevalence in the general population.

COVID-19 has challenged global health and affected many countries. The disease had infected more than 16 million people and killed over 650,000 ones by the end of July 2020. According to Sahu et al., COVID-19 epidemic is the third most common coronavirus in the 21st century, resulting in numerous deaths all over the world. It has caused severe psychological stress and increased hospital visits along with increased tiredness and burnout of medical staff. The disease has also raised many problems for the management of hospitals and diagnostic-treatment centers, so that many of them have no capacity to receive patients.

The present Commentary is a critical follow-up of a previous review about “Extracellular vesicles, news about their role in immune cells: physiology, pathology and diseases”, appeared in Clinical and Experimental Immunology last June 2019 [1].

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has led to coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19); a pandemic disease that has resulted in devastating social, economic, morbidity and mortality burdens. SARS-CoV-2 infects cells following receptor-mediated endocytosis and priming by cellular proteases.

Ectodomain shedding mediated by a disintegrin and metalloprotease 10/17 (ADAM10/17) modulates the function of immune effector cells and may be involved in the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. Toll-like receptor 7/8 (TLR7/8) recognizes single-strand RNA from viruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19) during the innate immune response

When creating the project, “An Escape Room Simulation Focused on Renal-Impairment for Prelicensure Nursing Students” [1] the author’s goal was to increase positive health outcomes for patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). AKI is complicated, but nurses who can help identify those at risk for the disorder and help initiate early treatment can improve patients’ results.

Cardiotoxicity is a well-known side-effect for the patients who are treated with different classes of anticancer drugs. In order to prevent potential drug-induced adverse effects, it is crucial to develop predictable human-based models and assays for drug screening. To that end, human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) are becoming promising and important for disease modeling and drug-induced toxicity screening.

The symptoms of the COVID-19 range from asymptomatic or mild disease to severe disease that results in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and eventually death. Understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for the progression from mild to severe disease is the key to decreasing the mortality of COVID-19. Compared to mild cases, severe cases of the COVID-19 have decreased interferon (IFN) a, ß, λ production. Type I (IFN a/ß) and III IFNs (λ) work coordinately to induce inhibition of viral reproduction through the stimulation of interferon stimulated genes (ISGs).