The COVID-19 outbreak from the SARS-CoV-2 virus has shocking us with its fast transmission and deadly complication. Due to that, the movement restriction has been enforced to contain this pandemic. Recently, there is an increasing pressure to restart and resurrect social and economic sectors, and to allow people to get back to work. This must be well planned before the movement restriction is lifted. Because of that, this paper aims to review and make recommendations on the new normal for our daily activities and works. Firstly, the social and economic sectors must be opening in phases by emphasizing safety and health than an economic recovery. In the meantime, the WHO recommendations on social distancing and personal hygiene must be adapted and become a new normal. Because of that, the government and local authorities should develop a soft landing approach based on the WHO recommendations. Next, the community must be engaged and empowered to do their parts in preventing the spread of COVID-19. From the new normal recommendations, the people can continue their daily routines, and at the same time can reduce COVID-19 transmission. However, medical possibilities are not considered while compiling these new normals and procedures. The population must adapt and embrace the new normal to control, reduce and prevent the spreading of COVID-19, as it could be with us for a long time.
Unchanged substrate in a negative rapid urease test may be reused to detect Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). This could potentially reduce costs and wastage in low prevalence and resource-poor settings. We thus aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of reused Pronto Dry and CLOtest kits, comparing this to the use of new Pronto Dry test kits and histopathological evaluation of gastric mucosal biopsies.
CXC ligand (L)12 is a chemokine implicated in the migration, invasion and metastasis of cancer cells via interaction with its receptors CXC chemokine receptor (CXCR)4 and CXCR7. In the present study, CXCL12-mediated Ca2+signalling was compared with two basal-like breast cancer cell lines, MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468, which demonstrate distinct metastatic potential. CXCL12 treatment induced Ca2+responses in the more metastatic MDA-MB-231 cells but not in the less metastatic MDA-MB-468 cells. Assessment of mRNA levels of CXCL12 receptors and their potential modulators in both cell lines revealed that CXCR4 and CXCR7 levels were increased in MDA-MB-231 cells compared with MDA-MB-468 cells. Cluster of differentiation (CD)24, the negative regulator of CXCL12 responses, demonstrated increased expression in MDA-MB-468 cells compared with MDA-MB-231 cells, and the two cell lines expressed comparable levels of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)2α, a CXCR4 regulator. Induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by epidermal growth factor exhibited opposite effects on CXCR4 mRNA levels compared with hypoxia-induced EMT. Neither EMT inducer exhibited an effect on CXCR7 expression, however hypoxia increased HIF2α expression levels in MDA-MB-468 cells. Analysis of the gene expression profiles of breast tumours revealed that the highest expression levels of CXCR4 and CXCR7 were in the Claudin-Low molecular subtype, which is markedly associated with EMT features.