BACKGROUND: This systematic study aims to assess the global epidemiologic, economic, and humanistic burden of illness associated with all types of hereditary angioedema.
METHODS: A systematic search for articles reporting the epidemiologic, economic, and humanistic burden associated with patients with HAE was conducted using English and Chinese literature databases from the inception to May 23, 2022. The selected studies were assessed for their quality and risk of bias. The study was conducted in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO; CRD42022352377).
RESULTS: In total, 65 articles that met the search inclusion criteria reported 10,310 patients with HAE, of whom 5861 were female patients. Altogether, 4312 patients (81%) and 479 patients (9%) had type 1 and type 2 HAE, respectively, whereas 422 patients (8%) had HAE-normal C1-INH. The overall prevalence of all types of HAE was between 0.13 and 1.6 cases per 100,000. The mean or median delay from the first onset of a symptom of HAE to confirmed diagnosis ranged from 3.9 to 26 years. The estimated risk of death from asphyxiation was 8.6% for patients with HAE. Hospitalization, medication, unnecessary surgeries, doctor visits, specialist services, and nursing costs are direct expenses that contribute to the growing economic burden. The indirect cost accounted mostly due to missing work ($3402/year) and loss of productivity ($5750/year). Furthermore, impairment of QoL as reported by patient-reported outcomes was observed. QoL measures identified depression, anxiety, and stress to be the most common symptoms for adult patients and children.
CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the importance of early diagnosis and the need for improving awareness among health care professionals to reduce the burden of HAE on patients and society.

UNASSIGNED: Anxiety and depression are common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), especially older adult patients. This can complicate the disease progression and lead to increased clinical and economic burden. We sought to investigate the clinical and economic burdens associated with the presence of anxious and/or depressive symptoms among older adult COPD patients.
UNASSIGNED: We screened 579 patients aged over 60 years and diagnosed with COPD via a lung function test following the 2017 Global Initiative Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines. Anxiety and depression were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) through face-to-face interviews at admission. Follow-up was conducted by telephone calls at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months after discharge to assess clinical and economic burden. COPD-anxiety and/or depression patients were matched to patients without anxiety and depression (COPD-only) using propensity scores. Multivariate regression models were used to compare clinical and economic burden between COPD-anxiety and/or depression and COPD-only groups.
UNASSIGNED: Compared with COPD-only patients, COPD patients complicated with anxiety and/or depression had increased clinical burden, including higher COPD-related outpatient visits, COPD-related hospitalizations, and length of COPD-related hospitalizations (p < 0.001). Moreover, they also had an increased economic burden, including higher annual total healthcare costs, medical costs, and pharmacy costs (p < 0.001).
UNASSIGNED: Older adult COPD patients with anxiety or depression had significantly higher clinical and economic burdens than patients without these comorbidities. These findings deserve further exploration and may be useful for the formulation of relevant healthcare policies.

OBJECTIVE: Leptomeningeal disease (LMD) is associated with poor survival and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). There is an urgent need for clinical research in this area to improve the outcomes. The purpose of this study is to summarize the areas of active clinical research in LMD, identify the knowledge gap, and suggest future research directions.
METHODS: A narrative review of clinical trials in LMD was conducted based on a search in clinicatrials.gov using the search term \"leptomeningeal\" under \"condition or disease\". Clinical trials in patients with LMD arising from solid malignancy that were labelled as \"not yet recruiting\", \"recruiting\", \"enrolling by invitation\" or \"active, not recruiting\" were included. Studies which were deemed to have significant impact on future research direction in LMD were selected for discussion.
UNASSIGNED: A total of 38 clinical trials were included. Of these 38 trials, 19 are discussed in this review, with focus on their research questions and impact on future research directions. Most of the studies that were not selected for discussion focused on biomarker-driven interventions. Four key areas of research were identified, namely the (I) diagnosis, response assessment or molecular profiling of LMD (n=2); (II) advances in radiotherapy (n=3); (III) intrathecal treatment (n=13); (IV) novel drug carrier for systemic treatment (n=1). The research questions in the 19 discussed clinical trials included the tumour microenvironment of LMD, the role of novel molecular techniques in LMD, combination of radiotherapy with drugs, and cell-based immunotherapy. Among these 19 studies, 11 were phase 1 trials, 3 were phase 2 or phase 1/2 trials, 2 were phase 3 or phase 2/3 trials and the study phase was not reported in the remaining 3 studies. The existing knowledge gaps are discussed, including the lack of primary site-specific prognostic tools, cost-effectiveness studies, dedicated HRQoL assessment tools for LMD and sequencing of treatment.
CONCLUSIONS: The current clinical trials in LMD offer the promise to improve the diagnosis and treatment outcomes of patients with LMD. More research is needed to overcome the potential hurdles in the current treatment and bridge the knowledge gaps as identified in this review, to improve patients\' quantity and quality of survival.

OBJECTIVE: Mucormycosis is an opportunistic fungal infection associated with low incidence but high mortality. Few studies have shown the treatment and disease burden of mucormycosis in China. This study aims at collecting all the reported cases to describe the characteristics and treatment patterns and to assess the economic burden of mucormycosis in China.
METHODS: We conducted a literature review of mucormycosis case reports in Chinese patients to summarize the characteristics and treatment patterns of the disease in China. An economic model was built to evaluate the total cost of mucormycosis per person, including direct medical cost, direct non-medical cost and indirect cost.
CONCLUSIONS: A total of 676 case reports showed that the most common type of mucormycosis was pulmonary mucormycosis (299/676, 44.2%), and rhinocerebral mucormycosis had the highest case fatality rate (122/185, 68.5%). Among those who used empiric therapies, 48.8% (231/473) did not include anti-mucor drugs; 79.8% (336/421) of the therapies include amphotericin B (AMB) or AMB-lipo after detection of mucormycetes; 98.6% (69/70) of the reported adverse events were associated with AMB and AMB-lipo. The duration of treatment ranged from 90 to 180 days; the length of stay ranged from 22 to 95 days. The average total cost per patient was 166 thousand Chinese Yuan (CNY), of which 93.1% was the direct medical cost (155 thousand CNY).
CONCLUSIONS: There are a limited number of antifungal treatment options for mucormycosis in China. This study highlights the critical need to introduce innovative and broader spectrum antifungal drugs with improved safety, better clinical efficacy, easier administration and reduced economic burden to Chinese mucormycosis patients.

Background: Carbapenem resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA), and Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) pose significant threats to public health. However, the clinical and economic impacts of CRKP, CRPA, and CRAB remain largely uninvestigated in China. This study aimed to examine the clinical and economic burden of CRKP, CRPA, and CRAB compared with carbapenem susceptible cases in China. Method: We conducted a retrospective and multicenter study among inpatients hospitalized at four tertiary hospitals between 2013 and 2015 who had K. pneumoniae, P. aeruginosa, and A. baumannii positive clinical samples. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to balance the impact of potential confounding variables, including age, sex, insurance, number of diagnosis, comorbidities (disease diagnosis, and Charlson comorbidity index), admission to intensive care unit, and surgeries. The main indicators included economic costs, length of stay (LOS), and mortality rate. Results: We included 12,022 inpatients infected or colonized with K. pneumoniae, P. aeruginosa, and A. baumannii between 2013 and 2015, including 831 with CRKP and 4328 with carbapenem susceptible K. pneumoniae (CSKP), 1244 with CRPA and 2674 with carbapenem susceptible P. aeruginosa (CSPA), 1665 with CRAB and 1280 with carbapenem susceptible A. baumannii (CSAB). After PSM, 822 pairs, 1155 pairs, and 682 pairs, respectively were generated. Compared with carbapenem-susceptible cases, those with CRKP, CRPA, and CRAB were associated with statistically significantly increased total hospital cost ($14,252, p < 0.0001; $4605, p < 0.0001; $7277, p < 0.0001) and excess LOS (13.2 days, p < 0.0001; 5.4 days, p = 0.0003; 15.8 days, p = 0.0004). In addition, there were statistically significantly differences in hospital mortality rate between CRKP and CSKP, and CRAB and CSAB group (2.94%, p = 0.024; 4.03%, p = 0.03); however, the difference between CRPA and CSPA group was marginal significant (2.03%, p = 0.052). Conclusion: It highlights the clinical and economic impact of CRKP, CRPA, and CRAB to justify more resources for implementing antibiotic stewardship practices to improve clinical outcomes and to reduce economic costs.

BACKGROUND: The epidemiology of acute kidney injury (AKI) in nonexacerbated chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (NECOPD) patients is unknown. This study investigated the factors associated with AKI and the association between AKI and in-hospital mortality in the hospitalized NECOPD population.
METHODS: The electronic medical records of 2897 patients hospitalized with NECOPD were analyzed retrospectively. Demographic information, medicine used before AKI, diagnosis records and laboratory data were collected. AKI was classified as community-acquired (CA-) or hospital-acquired (HA-) AKI according to the serum creatinine criteria. Risk factors for HA-AKI and in-hospital mortality were analyzed by logistic regression analyses. To avoid an interaction between cor pulmonale and AKI, the association between AKI and in-hospital morality was further analyzed with cor pulmonale stratification.
RESULTS: The incidence rates of CA- and HA-AKI were 7.1 and 12.0%, respectively. Increased age, female sex, cor pulmonale comorbidity, chronic kidney disease stage, diuretic and glycopeptide use before AKI and iodine-containing contrast medium exposure were independently associated with HA-AKI. A total of 5.7% of the patients died. After adjustment for age, sex, cor pulmonale, chronic kidney disease, Charlson comorbidity index score (without renal disease) and hemoglobin level, HA-AKI was an independent risk factor for in-hospital mortality [OR 13.909 (95% CI 8.699-22.238) in non-cor pulmonale subgroup; OR 26.604 (95% CI 12.166-58.176) in cor pulmonale subgroup], whereas CA-AKI was not.
CONCLUSIONS: AKI is common in the NECOPD population. Diuretics and contrast media are associated with HA-AKI in this population. The patients with HA-AKI have a higher mortality risk than the patients without AKI.