Early Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the United States Construction Industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the largest global health crisis in decades. Apart from the unprecedented number of deaths and hospitalizations, the pandemic has resulted in economic slowdowns, widespread business disruptions, and significant hardships. This study focused on investigating the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.

Investigation of interleukin-1β release from cryopreserved blood stimulated with endotoxin.

The feasibility of an indigenously developed ELISA method to determine cytokine response to wide spectrum of pyrogenic stimuli utilizing fresh human whole blood is limited by the availability of healthy donors. The possibility of using cryopreservation of pooled human blood for detection of cytokine response to lipopolysaccharide is explored in this study. The effect of cryopreservation on blood parameters, cellular morphology and cytokine response were compared with that of the pooled fresh blood and cryopreserved blood from single and multiple donors.

Inflammatory response to pyrogens determined by a novel ELISA method using human whole blood.

Presence of pyrogens on implants, medical devices, drugs and biological materials compromise on the biosafety and poses a major health hazard in therapeutics. Detection of pyrogenic contamination has so far been done with either in vivo rabbit pyrogen assay or Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate (LAL) methods, each of which having their distinct advantages and disadvantages. An indigenously developed ELISA method quantifying the pro-inflammatory response triggered by pyrogens on human whole blood is demonstrated for its versatility to detect the pyrogenic response to gram-negative, gram-positive bacteria, chemical and biological pyrogens.

Detection of pyrogenicity on medical grade polymer materials using rabbit pyrogen, LAL and ELISA method.

The objective of the study is to detect the pyrogenicity of five medical grade gelatinous polymer materials, intended for the manufacturing of capsule for pharmaceutical applications, by an indigenously developed ELISA, LAL and rabbit pyrogen assays. The ELISA methodology includes the incubation of the sample extract with blood from a healthy donor at 37°C. Any pyrogen present in the extract induces the IL-1β which can be determined by ELISA.