Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the pathogen of which is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a highly infectious disease that broke out in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and has spread to more than 200 countries.¹ COVID-19 has been proven to be transmitted mainly through droplets and contact.² The eye is also considered an important route of infection.

Background: The triglyceride-glucose index (TyG index) is one of the surrogate markers of insulin resistance, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) reflects systemic inflammation. Existing studies suggest that insulin resistance or systemic inflammation may be indicative of cardiometabolic disease, but few of the existing studies have combined the TyG index and inflammation levels before assessing cardiometabolic multimorbidity. Our study data came from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Participants in this data were followed for 9 years, and we used these data to conduct a long-term analysis to assess the combined effects of the TyG index and hsCRP on cardiometabolic multimorbidity in Chinese adults over 45 years of age.Purpose: To study the combined effect of TyG index and hsCRP on cardiometabolic multimorbidity in middle-aged as well as elderly Chinese.Method: The study data came from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), which included a total of 4,483 middle-aged and elderly participants who did not have cardiovascular metabolic diseases at baseline, which was from CHARLS 2011, and the last survey was in 2020. A total of five cardiometabolic diseases were considered in this study: diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, heart disease and stroke. A person was defined as having cardiometabolic multimorbidity when he/she had two or more cardiometabolic diseases at the same time. TyG index (median as cut-off) and hsCRP (1mg/L as cut-off) were each divided into two groups and combined into four groups (Group L-L: TyG index<median & hsCRP=median & hsCRP<1mg/L; Group L-H: TyG index=1mg/L; Group H-H: TyG index>=median & hsCRP>=1mg/L). Multiple regression equations were fitted to analyse the combined influence of TyG index and hsCRP on cardiometabolic multimorbidity.Results: TyG index increases the risk of CMM events independently of hsCRP, as does the reverse. When the TyG index is elevated and hsCRP is also elevated, this condition significantly increases the danger of cardiometabolic multimorbidity in middle-aged and elderly Chinese.Conclusion: High levels of TyG index and hsCRP can enhance the danger of cardiometabolic multimorbidity in Chinese middle-aged and elderly people, and the joint use of hsCRP and TyG index assessment may be a better way to achieve primary prevention of cardiometabolic multimorbidity in Chinese middle-aged and elderly people.

In recent years, circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been increasingly reported to play a crucial role in the proliferation, migration, and invasion of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. However, the circRNA MET (circMET) oncogenic mechanism that drives NSCLC development and progression remains largely unknown. In this study, the present results demonstrated that circMET expression was significantly higher in NSCLC tissues than in peritumoral tissues using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Notably, NSCLC patients with a large tumor diameter, poor differentiation and lymphatic metastasis had high RNA levels of circMET. Moreover, high circMET expression served as an independent risk factor for short overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in NSCLC patients. Next, we validated that circMET overexpression can enhance NSCLC cell proliferation, metastasis, and immune evasion in vitro. Mechanistically, our study uncovers that circMET acts as a miR-145-5p sponge to upregulate CXCL3 expression. Collectively, circMET regulates the miR-145-5p/CXCL3 axis and serves as a novel, promising diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in patients with NSCLC.

Pediatric cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported. This meta-analysis was aimed at describing the clinical, laboratory, and imaging characteristics of children with COVID-19 based on published data of pediatric COVID-19 cases. Search of PubMed, Embase, Web of Sciences, Science Direct, and Google Scholar for articles published until December 14, 2020, that described the clinical, laboratory, and imaging features of children with COVID-19. Data were extracted independently by 2 authors. Random-effects meta-analysis models were used to report pooled results. Clinical data from 2874 children with COVID-19 from 37 articles were finally included for quantitative analyses. Fever (48.5%, 95% CI: 41.4%–55.6%) and cough (40.6%, 95% CI: 33.9%–47.5%) were the most common symptoms; asymptomatic infection and severe cases, respectively, accounted for 27.7% (95% CI: 19.7%–36.4%) patients and 1.1% of the 1933 patients included. Laboratory tests showed 5.5% (95% CI: 2.8%–8.9%) of the patients had lymphopenia. The pooled prevalence of leukopenia was 7.3% (95% CI: 3.4%–12.2%), and the C-reactive protein level was high in 14.0% (95% CI: 6.8%–22.8%). Chest computed tomography showed unilateral and bilateral lesions, and ground-glass opacity in 29.4% (95% CI: 24.8%–34.3%) and 24.7% (95% CI: 18.2%–31.6%), and 32.9% (95% CI: 25.3%–40.9%), respectively, and normal in approximately 36.0% (95% CI: 27.7%–44.7%). We found that children with COVID-19 had relatively mild disease, with quite a lot of asymptomatic infections and low rate of severe illness. Data from more regions are needed to determine the prevention and treatment strategies for children with COVID-19.

Tissue spray ionization mass spectrometry (TSI-MS) directly on small tissue samples has been shown to provide highly specific molecular information. In this study, we apply this method to the analysis of 38 pairs of human lung squamous cell carcinoma tissue (cancer) and adjacent normal lung tissue (normal). The main components of pulmonary surfactants, dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC, m/z 757.47), phosphatidylcholine (POPC, m/z 782.52), oleoyl phosphatidylcholine (DOPC, m/z 808.49) and arachidonic acid stearoyl phosphatidylcholine (SAPC, m/z 832.43), were identified using high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry. Monte Carlo sampling partial least squares linear discriminant analysis (PLS-LDA) was used to distinguish full-mass-range mass spectra of cancer samples from the mass spectra of normal tissues. With 5 principal components and 30 – 40 Monte Carlo samplings, the accuracy of cancer identification in matched tissue samples reached 94.42%. Classification of a tissue sample required less than 1 min, which is much faster than the analysis of frozen sections. The rapid, in situ diagnosis with minimal sample consumption provided by TSI-MS is advantageous for surgeons. TSI-MS allows them to make more informed decisions during surgery.

Background: Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (MIRI) is one of the main reasons for poor prognosis in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM). To date, the mechanism remains unknown. As members of the silent information regulator 2 (SIR2) family, both SIRT1 and SIRT3 have been shown to play critical roles in protecting cardiomyocytes against MIRI, but their specific protective mechanism, their interact between the two and their relationship with ferroptosis are still unclear. Hence, in this study, we investigated the interact and specific mechanism of SIRT1 and SIRT3 in protecting cardiomyocytes against MIRI, as well as their association with ferroptosis. Methods: Bioinformatics analysis methods were used to explore the expression of SIRT1 and SIRT3 during MIRI, and then a cell hypoxia/reoxygenation injury model was constructed to verify the results. Then, Pearson correlation analysis was further used to explore the relationship between SIRT1 and SIRT3, whose roles in the regulation of ferroptosis were also analysed by gene knock down, Western Blotting and flow cytometry. Several biomarkers, such as Fe²⁺ concentration, lipid peroxidation marker MDA and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), were used to evaluate changes in ferroptosis. Results: The expression of SIRT1 and SIRT3 was abnormal during MIRI, and SIRT1 was significantly negatively correlated with SIRT3 in the SIRT1-SIRT3 axis. Further analysis revealed that the SIRT1-SIRT3 axis was closely correlated with ferroptosis, and its silencing effectively increase the incidence of ferroptosis. Furthermore, SIRT1-SIRT3 axis silencing was accompanied by changes in PINK1, Parkin, P62/SQSTM1 and LC3 expression. PINK1 silencing significantly increased the incidence of ferroptosis, while resveratrol (Res) and/or honokiol (HKL) effectively reversed the outcome. Conclusion: Abnormalities in the SIRT1-SIRT3 axis promote MIRI through ferroptosis caused by silencing the PINK1/Parkin signaling pathway.