The COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020 with major health consequences. While a need to disseminate information to the medical community and general public was paramount, concerns have been raised regarding the scientific rigor in published reports. We performed a systematic review to evaluate the methodological quality of currently available COVID-19 studies compared to historical controls. A total of 9895 titles and abstracts were screened and 686 COVID-19 articles were included in the final analysis. Comparative analysis of COVID-19 to historical articles reveals a shorter time to acceptance (13.0[IQR, 5.0–25.0] days vs. 110.0[IQR, 71.0–156.0] days in COVID-19 and control articles, respectively; p < 0.0001). Furthermore, methodological quality scores are lower in COVID-19 articles across all study designs. COVID-19 clinical studies have a shorter time to publication and have lower methodological quality scores than control studies in the same journal. These studies should be revisited with the emergence of stronger evidence.

Many chronic medical disorders are associated with psychiatric morbidity. Yet the psychological burden of these disorders often goes unnoticed. In dermatology, psoriasis has a higher association with psychiatric illness, including depression and suicide risk, compared with many other conditions. Studies suggest that effective treatment of psoriasis results in the improvement of psychiatric morbidity, particularly depression and anxiety. New biologic treatments for psoriasis may offer help beyond clearing of the skin in these patients and may lead to a reduction of psychiatric morbidity. Although concerns have been raised regarding the potential link between interleukin-17R blockade in the treatment of psoriasis and suicide, current literature provides no evidence to support this association.

Background: Management of ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) necessitates rapid reperfusion. Delays prolong myocardial ischemia and increase the risk of complications, including death. The COVID-19 pandemic may have affected management of STEMI. We evaluated the relative volume of hospitalizations and clinical time intervals within a regional STEMI system. Methods: Four hundred ninety-four patients with STEMI were grouped into prelockdown, lockdown, and reopening cohorts. Clinical, temporal, and outcome data were collected and compared among groups for R ESUM EContexte : La prise en charge de l'infarctus du myocarde avec el evation du segment ST (STEMI) n ecessite une reperfusion rapide. Tout retard de reperfusion prolonge l'isch emie myocardique et augmente le risque de complications, y compris le risque de d ecès. Il est possible que la pand emie de COVID-19 ait nui à la prise en charge du STEMI. Nous avons donc evalu e le nombre relatif d'hospitalisations et le temps ecoul e avant la reperfusion au sein d'un système r egional de traitement des STEMI. M ethodologie : Au total, 494 patients ayant pr esent e un STEMI ont et e divis es en trois cohortes : pr econfinement, confinement et During the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduction in patients presenting with ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) has been reported. 1,2 These studies lacked data on important areas including impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on STEMI care in regions with low incidence of disease, granular details regarding reperfusion management during lockdown, effect of the pandemic on STEMI care in rural regions, and patterns of STEMI volume posteCOVID-19 lockdown. It is imperative to study the effects of COVID-19 comprehensively, so that lessons can be learned for a potential second wave or future pandemics.From March 11, 2020, to August 16, 2020, the Ottawa regions recorded 2761 cases of In response to the initial outbreak, the Ontario Ministry of Health declared a state of emergency and instituted lockdown measures on March 17, 2020. 4 Various restrictions were imposed including closure of nonessential businesses, limits on social gatherings, and cancellation of elective medical procedures. 4 These interventions were successful in limiting the spread of COVID-19; however, concerns regarding an unintended impact on STEMI care were raised. 3,

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a lethal gynaecological disease that imposes significant burden on health care and patient quality of life. High-grade serous carcinoma of the ovary (HGSC) is the most prevalent histological type of EOC. A vast majority of HGSC cases are diagnosed at late stages of the disease, limiting the opportunity for clinical intervention and resulting in a 10-year survival rate of <20%. Recent innovations in high-throughput molecular analysis of patient-derived specimens may address these clinical challenges by providing an enhanced understanding of the molecular aetiology of ovarian cancer, in addition to offering several opportunities for rational biomarker and targeted therapy discovery. In this review, we highlight the most significant contributions of omics approaches and how the advent of immunomics can aid in personalized combination chemo-immunotherapy in ovarian cancer treatment. We further provide insights into immunogenomic correlates of pre-treatment tumour immune microenvironment and some of the potential interpretations of immunomic data that require further validation, based on stromal and immune contributions to biomarker signatures. We believe a comprehensive integrative approach via meta-analysis of large ovarian cancer molecular profiling data sets is urgently needed to define robust prognostic and predictive classifiers of disease progression and treatment response. These investigations will inform rationalized biomarker-driven combination chemo-immunotherapy trials for improving response and survival of ovarian cancer patients.

Objective: To systematically evaluate the quality of reporting of currently available COVID-19 studies compared to historical controls. Design: A systematic review and case-control analysis Data sources: MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials until May 14, 2020 Study selection: All original clinical literature evaluating COVID-19 or SARS-CoV2 were identified and 1:1 historical control of the same study type in the same published journal was matched from the previous year Data extraction: Two independent reviewers screened titles, abstracts, and full-texts and independently assessed methodological quality using Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool, Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, QUADAS-2 Score, or case series checklist. Results: 9895 titles and abstracts were screened and 686 COVID-19 articles were included in the final analysis in which 380 (55.4%) were case series, 199 (29.0%) were cohort, 63 (9.2%) were diagnostic, 38 (5.5%) were case-control, and 6 (0.9%) were randomized controlled trials. Overall, high quality/low-bias studies represented less than half of COVID-19 articles - 49.0% of case series, 43.9% of cohort, 31.6% of case-control, and 6.4% of diagnostic studies. We matched 539 control articles to COVID-19 articles from the same journal in the previous year for a final analysis of 1078 articles. The median time to acceptance was 13.0 (IQR, 5.0-25.0) days in COVID-19 articles vs. 110.0 (IQR, 71.0-156.0) days in control articles (p<0.0001). Overall, methodological quality was lower in COVID-19 articles with 220 COVID-19 articles of high quality (41.0%) vs. 392 control articles (73.3%, p<0.0001) with similar results when stratified by study design. In both unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression, COVID-19 articles were associated with lower methodological quality (odds ratio, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.33, p<0.0001). Conclusion: Currently published COVID-19 studies were accepted more quickly and were found to be of lower methodological quality than comparative studies published in the same journal. Given the implications of these studies to medical decision making and government policy, greater effort to appropriately weigh the existing evidence in the context of emerging high-quality research is needed. Study registration: PROSPERO: CRD42020187318

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Background Electronic health record (EHR) databases provide an opportunity to facilitate characterization and trends in patients with COVID-19. Methods Patients with COVID-19 were identified based on an ICD-10 diagnosis code for COVID-19 (U07.1) and/or a positive SARS-CoV-2 viral lab result from January 2020 to November 2020. Patients were characterized in terms of demographics, healthcare utilization, clinical comorbidities, therapies, laboratory results, and procedures/care received, including critical care, intubation/ventilation, and occurrence of death were described, overall and by month. Results There were 393,773 patients with COVID-19 and 56,996 with a COVID-19 associated hospitalization. A greater percentage of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 relative to all COVID-19 cases were older, male, African American, and lived in the Northeast and South. The most common comorbidities before admission/infection date were hypertension (40.8%), diabetes (29.5%), and obesity (23.8%), and the most common diagnoses during hospitalization were pneumonia (59.6%), acute respiratory failure (44.8%), and dyspnea (28.0%). A total of 85.7% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had CRP values > 10 mg/L, 75.5% had fibrinogen values > 400 mg/dL, and 76.8% had D-dimer values > 250 ng/mL. Median values for platelets, CRP, lactate dehydrogenase, D-dimer, and fibrinogen tended to decrease from January-March to November. The use of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine during hospitalization peaked by March (71.2%) and was used rarely by May (5.1%) and less than 1% afterwards, while the use of remdesivir had increased by May (10.0%) followed by dexamethasone by June (27.7%). All-cause mortality was 3.2% overall and 15.0% among those hospitalized; 21.0% received critical care and 16.0% received intubation/ventilation/ECMO. Conclusions This study characterizes US patients with COVID-19 and their management during hospitalization over the first eleven months of this disease pandemic.

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