Comparing machine learning screening approaches using clinical data and cytokine profiles for COVID-19 in resource-limited and resource-abundant settings.

Accurate screening of COVID-19 infection status for symptomatic patients is a critical public health task. Although molecular and antigen tests now exist for COVID-19, in resource-limited settings, screening tests are often not available. Furthermore, during the early stages of the pandemic tests were not available in any capacity.

Insights into performance evaluation of compound-protein interaction prediction methods.

Motivation: Machine-learning-based prediction of compound-protein interactions (CPIs) is important for drug design, screening and repurposing. Despite numerous recent publication with increasing methodological sophistication claiming consistent improvements in predictive accuracy, we have observed a number of fundamental issues in experiment design that produce overoptimistic estimates of model performance.

Results: We systematically analyze the impact of several factors affecting generalization performance of CPI predictors that are overlooked in existing work: (i) similarity between training and test examples in cross-validation; (ii) synthesizing negative examples in absence of experimentally verified negative examples and (iii) alignment of evaluation protocol and performance metrics with real-world use of CPI predictors in screening large compound libraries.

First detection and molecular characterization of avian polyomavirus in young parrots in Pakistan.

Avian polyomavirus (APV) infection, also called as budgerigar fledgling disease (BFD) causes various health problems in many psittacine species which may cause untimely death. The aims of this study were to investigate, for the first time, the detection, molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of avian polyomavirus (APV) in Pakistani psittacine birds. In an aviary a disease similar to APV was found and 90% of the nestlings died within a few weeks.

Vesical endometriosis.

Endometriosis affecting the urinary tract is very rare and the most common site of involvement is urinary bladder. The clinical features are urgency and frequency, hypo gastric pain and hematuria. Cystoscopic examination is the most valuable diagnostic test but definitive diagnosis requires histological confirmation.