MRI texture features of infrapatellar fat pad were valid to predict the development of incident knee osteoarthritis. Background Infrapatellar fat pad (IPFP) quality has been implicated as a marker for predicting knee osteoarthritis (KOA); however, no valid quantification for subtle IPFP abnormalities has been est...

In the end of 2019, a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) emerged in Wuhan, China and was causing a serious outbreak of acute respiratory illness. ¹ Wuhan locates in the centre of mainland China with a population of 14 million and is very conveniently connected to other parts of China through airlines and high-speed rails. ² As of 31 January 2020 (5:00 p.m., GMT + 8), there were 9809 confirmed 2019-nCoV cases in mainland China, including 213 deaths and 180 discharges. ^{3, 4} Cases infected in Wuhan were also detected in many foreign countries or regions including Thailand, Japan, Republic of Korea, the United States, Canada and some European countries. ⁴ The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the novel coronavirus outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern. Official reports on the newly confirmed cases are released very rapidly (several times a day) after January 16, ^3–5 as the official diagnosis protocol was released by the WHO on January 17. ⁶ Recent studies indicated the likelihood of travel-related risks of 2019-nCoV spreading both domestically and internationally. ^{7, 8} Many major cities in mainland China reported the finding of imported cases, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The outbreak is still on-going with an increasing trend in daily new cases. ^{3, 4} Before the Wuhan lockdown (official travel restriction) on January 23, virtually all cases found in other major cities were exported cases from Wuhan. Population flow data between major cities in mainland China are available online due to the rapid development of internet in recent decades, see https://qianxi.baidu.com/ (in Chinese). In this work, we quantified the association between the domestic travel load and the number of cases exported from Wuhan to other city-clusters in mainland China. Our city-clusters are the pool of top five cities in the top 10 provinces (in number of cumulative cases). Thus, we included 10 city-clusters in the analysis, and the details of the selected city-clusters can be found in Supplementary Data S1 .

Background: The increasing use of extended criteria donors (ECD) sets higher requirements for graft preservation. Machine perfusion (MP) improves orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) outcomes, but its effects on different donor types remains unclear. The authors’ aim was to assess the effects of hypothermic machine perfusion (HMP), normothermic machine perfusion (NMP), or normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) versus static cold storage (SCS) on different donor types. Materials and methods: A literature search comparing the efficacy of MP versus SCS in PubMed, Cochrane, and EMBASE database was conducted. A meta-analysis was performed to obtain pooled effects of MP on ECD, donation after circulatory death (DCD), and donor after brainstem death. Results: Thirty nine studies were included (nine randomized controlled trials and 30 cohort studies). Compared with SCS, HMP significantly reduced the risk of non-anastomotic biliary stricture (NAS) [odds ratio (OR) 0.43, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.26–0.72], major complications (OR 0.55, 95% CI 0.39–0.78), and early allograft dysfunction (EAD) (OR 0.46, 95% CI 0.32–0.65) and improved 1-year graft survival (OR 2.36, 95% CI 1.55–3.62) in ECD-OLT. HMP also reduced primary non-function (PNF) (OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.18–0.92) and acute rejection (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.40–0.97). NMP only reduced major complications in ECD-OLT (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.34–0.94), without favorable effects on other complications and survival. NRP lowered the overall risk of NAS (OR 0.27, 95% CI 0.11–0.68), PNF (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.22–0.85), and EAD (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.42–0.80) and meanwhile improved 1-year graft survival (OR 2.40, 95% CI 1.65–3.49) in control DCD-OLT. Conclusions: HMP might currently be considered for marginal livers as it comprehensively improves ECD-OLT outcomes. NMP assists some outcomes in ECD-OLT, but more evidence regarding NMP-ECD is warranted. NRP significantly improves DCD-OLT outcomes and is recommended where longer non-touch periods exist.

Backgrounds: The emerging virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused a large outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China since December 2019. Based on the publicly available surveillance data, we identified 21 transmission chains in Hong Kong and estimated the serial interval (SI) of COVID-19. Methods: Index cases were identified and reported after symptoms onset, and contact tracing was conducted to collect the data of the associated secondary cases. An interval censored likelihood framework is adopted to fit a Gamma distribution function to govern the SI of COVID-19. Findings: Assuming a Gamma distributed model, we estimated the mean of SI at 4.4 days (95%CI: 2.9−6.7) and SD of SI at 3.0 days (95%CI: 1.8−5.8) by using the information of all 21 transmission chains in Hong Kong. Conclusion: The SI of COVID-19 may be shorter than the preliminary estimates in previous works. Given the likelihood that SI could be shorter than the incubation period, pre-symptomatic transmission may occur, and extra efforts on timely contact tracing and quarantine are recommended in combating the COVID-19 outbreak.