Comparative study of six SARS-CoV-2 serology assays: Diagnostic performance and antibody dynamics in a cohort of hospitalized patients for moderate to critical COVID-19.

Background: To overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, serology assays are needed to identify past and ongoing infections. In this context, we evaluated the diagnostic performance of 6 immunoassays on samples from hospitalized patients for moderate to critical COVID-19.

Methods: 701 serum samples obtained from 443 COVID-19 patients (G1: 356 positive RT-PCR patients and G2: 87 negative RT-PCR cases) and 108 pre-pandemic sera from blood donors were tested with 6 commercial immunoassays: (1) Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2, Roche (Nucleocapsid, N), (2) Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S, Roche (Spike, S), (3) Vidas SARS-COV-2 IgM/IgG, BioMérieux (S), (4) SARS-CoV-2 IgG, Abbott (N), (5) Access SARS-CoV-2 IgG, Beckman Coulter (Receptor Binding Domain), and (6) Standard F COVID-19 IgM/IgG Combo FIA, SD Biosensor (N).

Acute fatal group A Streptococcal primary peritonitis following vaginal delivery.

Acute primary peritonitis due to group A streptococci (GAS) is a rare but life-threatening disease most often seen in case of liver cirrhosis or nephrotic syndrome. The specific mechanism of this infection remains unknown and according to the literature hematogenous, lymphatic, retrograde inoculation from the genitourinary tract and translocation of intestinal tract flora have all been proposed. We report a case of a 37-year-old previously healthy patient who presented to the emergency, four days after vaginal delivery, with abdominal pain and septic shock.

Adaptive Continuous Integral-Sliding-Mode Controller for Wearable Robots: Application to an Upper Limb Exoskeleton.

This paper introduces an adaptive integral sliding mode controller for exoskeletons. The controller design is based on the hypothesis that only classical properties are known such as parameters' bounds, and all other functions are unknown. To ensure the convergence in position, velocity and acceleration for desired trajectories, disturbances are supposed to be bounded.