Communicating science to the general public could sometimes be problematic partly because the language used in scientific writing was difficult to understand for people outside the scientific community. Against this backdrop, lay summaries were introduced to the research community. Lay summaries are short, non‐technical summaries of scientific articles that are aimed at a lay audience. Despite the increasing attention on the roles that lay summaries play in scientific communication, it remains unclear whether they are comprehensible to the lay audience. To address the foregoing concerns, this study examines the readability of lay summaries published in Autism Research. It was found that lay summaries were more readable than traditional abstracts but were not easy enough to read for the lay audience. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

Background: The application of flipped classroom (FC) pedagogy has recently become increasingly popular in Chinese pharmacy education. However, its effectiveness in improving student learning has not yet been assessed. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of teaching with such pedagogical approach by examining studies that compare the FC approach with the traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) module through a systematic review and meta-analysis.Methods: Seven databases, including the PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Scientific Journals Database, Chinese Wanfang database, and China Biomedical Literature Database, were searched from the inception to 30 June 2021, to identify eligible articles of randomized controlled studies. The primary outcomes included the theoretical and experimental test scores, and the secondary outcomes were the results from questionnaires about the number of students who preferred the FC or endorsed its improving effects on their learning enthusiasm, self-learning ability, thinking skills, communication skills, and learning efficiency. The quantitative synthesis was conducted with Revman V.5.3 software following the Cochrane Reviewer’s Handbook guidelines and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement.Results: Eleven eligible studies published from 2017 to 2020 enrolling 1,200 students were included in this meta-analysis. The quantitative synthesis demonstrated that the FC module presented an overall more significant effectiveness over traditional LBL approach for Chinese pharmacy education in improving student academic performance as measured by theoretical test scores (SMD = 1.08, 95% CI: 0.60–1.56, p < 0.00001) and experimental test scores (MD = 6.62, 95% CI: 4.42–8.82, p < 0.00001). Further sub-group analysis revealed that the preferable effectiveness of FC was also evident in both theory-oriented (SMD = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.10–1.45, p < 0.00001) and experiments-oriented courses (MD = 6.52, 95% CI: 3.48–9.56, p < 0.00001) for both undergraduate (SMD = 0.84, 95% CI: 0.31–1.37, p < 0.00001) and 3-year junior-college students (MD = 8.17, 95% CI: 6.44–9.89, p < 0.00001). Additionally, analysis on the questionnaire outcomes revealed that more respondents preferred for FC and endorsed its improvement effects on developing students’ learning enthusiasm, self-learning ability, thinking skills, communication skills, and learning efficiency.Conclusion: Current evidence suggests that FC pedagogical approach can effectively improve student learning outcomes and is applicable to Chinese pharmacy education.

BackgroundInfectious disease is a large burden on public health globally. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) has become popular as a new tool for pathogen diagnosis with numerous advantages compared to conventional methods. Recently, research on mNGS increases yearly. However, no bibliometric analysis has systematically presented the full spectrum of this research field. Therefore, we reviewed all the publications associated with this topic and performed this study to analyze the comprehensive status and future hotspots of mNGS for infectious disease diagnosis.MethodsThe literature was searched in the Web of Science Core Collection and screened without year or language restrictions, and the characteristics of the studies were also identified. The outcomes included publication years, study types, journals, countries, authorship, institutions, frontiers, and hotspots with trends. Statistical analysis and visualization were conducted using VOSviewer (version 1.6.16) and CiteSpace (version 6.1. R3).ResultsIn total, 325 studies were included in the analysis after screening. Studies were published between 2009 and 2022 with a significantly increasing number from 1 to 118. Most of the studies were original articles and case reports. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology and Clinical Infectious Disease were the most commonly cited and co-cited journals. Institutions and researchers from China contributed the most to this field, followed by those from the USA. The hotspots and frontiers of these studies are pneumonia, tuberculosis, and central nervous system infections.ConclusionThis study determined that mNGS is a hot topic in the diagnosis of infectious diseases with development trends and provides insights into researchers, institutions, hotspots and frontiers in mNGS, which can offer references to related researchers and future research.

Objectives The objective of this study is to investigate, from a longitudinal perspective, how WHO communicated COVID-19 related information to the public through its press conferences during the first two years of the pandemic. Methods The transcripts of 195 WHO COVID-19 press conferences held between January 22, 2020 and February 23, 2022 were collected. All transcripts were syntactically parsed to extract highly frequent noun chunks that were potential topics of the press conferences. First-order autoregression models were fit to identify “hot” and “cold” topics. In addition, sentiments and emotions expressed in the transcripts were analyzed using lexicon-based sentiment/emotion analyses. Mann-Kendall tests were performed to capture the possible trends of sentiments and emotions over time. Results First, eleven “hot” topics were identified. These topics were pertinent to anti-pandemic measures, disease surveillance and development, and vaccine-related issues. Second, no significant trend was captured in sentiments. Last, significant downward trends were found in anticipation, surprise, anger, disgust, and fear. However, no significant trends were found in joy, trust, and sadness. Conclusions This retrospective study provided new empirical evidence on how WHO communicated issues pertaining to COVID-19 to the general public through its press conferences. With the help of the study, members of the general public, health organizations, and other stake-holders will be able to better understand the way in which WHO has responded to various critical events during the first two years of the pandemic.

Background: human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can disrupt the body's immune system, increasing the chance of various opportunistic infections. The risk of misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis is high for HIV and Leishmania coinfection. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has become a significant opportunistic infection in HIV type 1 (HIV-1)-infected patients in the epidemic region. Co-infection is difficult to diagnose, especially in non-endemic areas.Case Description: This study presents a case of VL in a middle-aged male patient with HIV coinfection, where the diagnosis was circuitous and complex. The patient was a 44-year-old male who was hospitalized due to fever. We considered common pathogen infection or hemophagocytic syndrome, so we did various etiological examinations and bone marrow biopsy smears, but no positive pathogens were found. Then we used a variety of empirical treatment, but the patient's temperature did not drop significantly. After the final diagnosis of VL using metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), we read the bone marrow smear and biopsy specimens again, and ultimately the Leishman-Donovan body and tissue intracellular pathogens were found. The patient responded well to treatment with sodium stibogluconate (SSG), his temperature gradually recovered from hyperthermia to normal, liver and spleen size gradually decreased, hemoglobin and platelet count rebounded, and weight increased by 1.5 kg after discharge from the hospital. We hope to deepen clinicians' understanding of mNGS for VL diagnosis and provide a review of the literature.Conclusions: For patients with HIV coinfection, mNGS-a test that can detect multiple pathogens simultaneously-can be used routinely when multiple pathogen tests showed no positive results, multiple empiric anti-infective therapies failed, and hospital technology and the patient's economy are adequate.While giving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), liposomal amphotericin B (L-AMB) is highly recommended because of its better efficacy and lower side effects. Not only is the treatment of leishmaniasis critical but also follow-up at a later stage is essential. After discharged, the patient had no significant discomfort and no increase in body temperature, his hemoglobin and platelets increased further. He demonstrated a further reduction in liver and spleen size and a weight gain of 1.5 kg.