The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by infection of SARS-CoV-2,has rapidly spread to become a worldwide pandemic. Global research focused on theunderstanding of the biochemical infective mechanism and on the discovery of a fast,sensitive and cheap diagnostic tool, able to discriminate the current and past SARS-CoV-2infections from a minimal invasive biofluid. The fast diagnosis of COVID-19 isfundamental in order to limit and isolate the positive cases, decreasing with a promptintervention the infection spreading.The aim of the project is to characterize and validate the salivary Raman fingerprint ofCOVID-19, understanding the principal biomolecules involved in the differences betweenthe three experimental groups: 1) healthy subjects, 2) COVID-19 patients and 3) subjectswith a past infection by COVID-19. The large amount of Raman data will be used to createa salivary Raman database, associating each data with the relative clinical datacollected.Starting from the preliminary results and protocols of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine andClinical Biophotonics (LABION) - IRCCS Fondazione Don Gnocchi Milano, the salivacollected from each experimental group will be analysed using Raman spectroscopy. All thedata will be processed for the baseline, shift and normalization in order to homogenizethe signals collected and creating in this way the Raman database. The average spectrumcalculated from each group will be characterized, identifying the principal families ofbiological molecules responsible for the spectral differences.EXPECTED RESULTS: Verify the possibility to use Raman spectroscopy on saliva samples forthe identification of subjects affected by COVID-19. The principal aim of the project isto create a classification model able to: discriminate COVID-19 current and pastinfection, identify the principal biological molecules altered in saliva during theinfection, predict the clinical course of newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients, translationand application of the classification model to a portable Raman for the test of a pointof care.

In December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases of unidentified cause emerged in Wuhan,wasidentified as the culprit of this disease currently being identified as "CoronavirusDisease 2019" (COVID-19) by World Health Organization.Coronavirus was found to not only target the patient's lungs but also multiple organs.Around 2-33% of Coronavirus Disease-19 patients developed gastrointestinal symptoms.Studies have shown that Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SAR-CoV-2) wasfound in patient's feces, suggesting that the virus can spread through feces. In ourprevious study, stool samples from 15 patients with COVID-19 were analysed. Depletedsymbionts and gut dysbiosis were noted even after patients were detected negative ofSARS-CoV-2. A series of microbiota were correlated inversely with the disease severityand virus load. Gut microbiota could play a role in modulating host immune response andpotentially influence disease severity and outcomes.The investigators are uncertain about the impact of synbiotic on patients with COVID-19.However, a therapeutic strategy aiming at investigating the gut Imicrobiota of patientswith COVID-9 who take synbiotic or not, leading to lesser progression to severe disease,less hospital stay and improved quality of life.

Since the beginning of the year, the entire world has been concerned with the novelSARS-CoV2 virus. After the first case descriptions in Wuhan, there has been a rapidincrease in the number of cases in Germany as well. In case of an illness with the virus,the affected patients can suffer from a slight infection of the upper respiratory tractup to severe lung failure and death. Interestingly, up to now, children are usually lessseverely affected than adults. However, the actual infection rates are probably similarto those of adults, even if the actual prevalence in children is difficult to quantify sofar. The extent of the disease in children has also been less researched to date than inadults, and the same applies to pregnant women and their newborns. In addition, intensiveresearch into possible therapeutic strategies and new vaccines is necessary. Here,however, the number of clinical studies in children is also far behind. In order to beable to understand the infection process and to protect the population with theirchildren, comprehensive testing is necessary. However, this poses great challenges forlocal health authorities. Scientific investigations are also costly, but are alreadybeing carried out by many institutes. So far, for example in the SeBlueCo study, a verylow prevalence of antibodies (1.3% of people) has been show. In children, however, boththe routes of infection and the way the immune system deals with the virus are probablydifferent than in adults. In this study the investigators now want to examine residualblood samples from pediatric patients of the pediatric and adolescent clinic in the timecourse after the beginning of the pandemic in order to better understand and monitor thedevelopment of antibody prevalence.

The Multi-arm trial of Inflammatory Signal Inhibitors for COVID-19 (MATIS) study is atwo-stage, open-label, randomised controlled trial assessing the efficacy of ruxolitinib(RUX) and fostamatinib (FOS) individually, compared to standard of care in the treatmentof COVID-19 pneumonia. The primary outcome is the proportion of hospitalised patientsprogressing from mild or moderate to severe COVID-19 pneumonia. Patients are treated for14 days and will receive follow-up assessment at 7, 14 and 28 days after the first studydose. Patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 pneumonia will be recruited. Initially,n=171 (57 per arm) patients will be recruited in Stage 1. Following interim analysis toassess the efficacy and safety of the treatments, approximately n=285 (95 per arm) willbe recruited during Stage 2.

The non-essential and non-urgent follow-up consultations of patients living with HIV werepostponed or transformed into "teleconsultation" or exchanges of e-mails betweenpractitioners and patients during COVID-19 epidemic. This change in care can have animpact on follow-up and access to treatment for PVVIH.

A Pilot Study of the Use of Oscillation and Lung Expansion (OLE) Therapy in PatientsHospitalized with COVID-19

North-east area of France was hit in February 2020 by the new coronavirus disease, moreseverely than other French regions. Factors affecting the evolution of the disease andits severity have been quickly identified, among them figuring different kinds of immunedeficiency. Even if nowadays HIV infection is usually well controlled by ARV drugs, thosepatients with uncontrolled viral load and/or low CD4 cell counts, remain at higher riskof severe COVID infection. In this context, the primary objective of our study is aimedat evaluating the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in a cohort of HIV-infectedpatients followed-up in an HIV-infection care center. Secondary objectives are:evaluating whether the antibodies are protective or not, the kinetic of these antibodies,and HIV associated factors with the presence of antibodies.

This study investigates a new diagnostic test in detecting SARS-CoV-2, the virus thatcauses the disease COVID-19. This may help to improve testing for COVID-19.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been widespread worldwide since December 2019. Itis highly contagious, and severe cases can lead to acute respiratory distress or multipleorgan failure. On 11 March 2020, the WHO made the assessment that COVID-19 can becharacterised as a pandemic. With the development of machine learning, deep learningbased artificial intelligence (AI) technology has demonstrated tremendous success in thefield of medical data analysis due to its capacity of extracting rich features fromimaging and complex clinical datasets. In this study, we aim to use clinical datacollected as part of routine clinical care (heart tracings, X-rays and CT scans) to trainartificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, to accurately predict the courseof disease in patients with Covid-19 infection, using these datasets.

This study is an open-label, single-arm study to evaluate the safety and efficacy ofAstrostem-V, allogenic adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells (AdMSC), in patientswith COVID-19 pneumonia. After each subject completes 12-Weeks visit (Visit 12) and thedata management team confirms all individual data have no issue, the individual databasewill be locked and the blinding will be open for the statistical analysis.