Efficacy of oral amantadine among patients hospitalised with COVID-19: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre study.

Background: Amantadine has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 because it shows anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity in vitro. However, to date, no controlled study has assessed the safety and efficacy of amantadine in COVID-19.

Research Question: Whether amantadine is effective and safe among patients with different COVID-19 severity classifications.

AQM based on the queue length: A real-network study.

Active Queue Management (AQM) is recommended by Internet Engineering Task Force to mitigate the bufferbloat phenomenon in the Internet. In this paper, we show the results of comprehensive measurements carried out in our university network, in which a device with an AQM algorithm, designed and programmed for this purpose, was running. The implemented AQM algorithm was based on the dropping function, i.

Asthma-COPD Overlap-A Discordance Between Patient Populations Defined by Different Diagnostic Criteria.

Background: The concordance between asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlap (ACO) defined according to Global Inititative for Asthma (GINA)/Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and other diagnostic criteria is unknown.

Objective: To assess the concordance between different ACO definitions and to estimate the definition-based ACO prevalence and characteristics.

Methods: A prospective, real-life study based on a 32-item data set was performed in a mixed population of patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Stem Cell-Based Therapy in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive fibrosing disorder for which there is no cure and no pharmacological treatment capable of increasing in a meaningful way the survival rate. Lung transplantation remains the only possible treatment for patients with advanced disease, although the increase in 5-year survival is only 45 %. Some preclinical studies have generated promising results about the therapeutic potential of exogenous stem cells.

Extracellular matrix remodelling properties of human fibrocytes.

The fibrocytes are thought to serve as a source of newly deposited collagens I and III during reparative processes and in certain fibrotic disorders, but their matrix remodelling properties are incompletely understood. We evaluated their ability to produce several extracellular matrix (ECM) components, in comparison with fibroblasts, and to participate in collagen turnover. The collagen gene expression profile of fibrocytes differed from that of fibroblasts because fibrocytes constitutively expressed relatively high levels of the mRNA encoding collagen VI and significantly lower levels of the mRNA encoding collagens I, III and V.