Using machine learning to improve living.
A groundbreaking machine-learning study has revealed the optimal drug combinations to prevent the recurrence of COVID-19 after initial infection. Interestingly, the ideal combination differs among patients.
Using real-world data from a hospital in China, the UC Riverside-led study discovered that factors such as age, weight, and other health conditions dictate which drug combinations most effectively reduce recurrence rates. This finding has been published in the journal Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
That the data came from China is significant for two reasons. First, when patients are treated for COVID-19 in the U.S., it is normally with one or two drugs. Early in the pandemic, doctors in China could prescribe as many as eight different drugs, enabling analysis of more drug combinations. Second, COVID-19 patients in China must quarantine in a government-run hotel after being discharged from the hospital, which allows researchers to learn about reinfection rates in a more systematic way.
The study project began in April 2020, about a month into the pandemic. At the time, most studies were focused on death rates. However, doctors in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, were more concerned about recurrence rates because fewer people there were dying.
“Surprisingly, nearly 30% of patients became positive again within 28 days of being released from the hospital,” said Jiayu Liao, associate professor of bioengineering and study co-author.
Data for more than 400 COVID patients was included in the study. Their average age was 45, most were infected with moderate cases of the virus, and the group was evenly divided by gender. Most were treated with one of various combinations of an antiviral, an anti-inflammatory, and an immune-modulating drug, such as interferon or hydroxychloroquine.
That various demographic groups had better success with different combinations can be traced to the way the virus operates.
“COVID-19 suppresses interferon, a protein cells make to inhibit invading viruses. With defenses lowered, COVID can replicate until the immune system explodes in the body, and destroys tissues,” explained Liao.
People who had weaker immune systems prior to COVID infection required an immune-boosting drug to fight the infection effectively. Younger peoples’ immune systems become overactive with infection, which can lead to excessive tissue inflammation and even death. To prevent this, younger people require an immune suppressant as part of their treatment.
“When we get treatment for diseases, many doctors tend to offer one solution for people 18 and up. We should now reconsider age differences, as well as other disease conditions, such as diabetes and obesity,” Liao said.
Most of the time, when conducting drug efficacy tests, scientists design a clinical trial in which people having the same disease and baseline characteristics are randomly assigned to either treatment or control groups. But that approach does not consider other medical conditions that may affect how the drug works — or doesn’t work — for specific sub-groups.
Because this study utilized real-world data, the researchers had to adjust for factors that could affect the outcomes they observed. For example, if a certain drug combination was given mostly to older people and proved ineffective, it would not be clear whether the drug is to blame or the person’s age.
“For this study, we pioneered a technique to attack the challenge of confounding factors by virtually matching people with similar characteristics who were undergoing different treatment combinations,” Cui said. “In this way, we could generalize the efficacy of treatment combinations in different subgroups.”
While COVID-19 is better understood today, and vaccines have greatly reduced death rates, there remains much to be learned about treatments and preventing reinfections. “Now that recurrence is more of a concern, I hope people can use these results,” Cui said.
Machine learning has been used in many areas related to COVID, such as disease diagnosis, vaccine development, and drug design, in addition to this new analysis of multi-drug combinations. Liao believes that technology will have an even bigger role to play going forward.
“In medicine, machine learning and artificial intelligence have not yet had as much impact as I believe they will in the future,” Liao said. “This project is a great example of how we can move toward truly personalized medicine.”
Reference: “Learning from real world data about combinatorial treatment selection for COVID-19” by Song Zhai, Zhiwei Zhang, Jiayu Liao and Xinping Cui, 3 April 2023, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
DOI: 10.3389/frai.2023.1123285
News
This Startup Says It Can Clean Your Blood of Microplastics
This is a non-exhaustive list of places microplastics have been found: Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, Antarctic snow, clouds, plankton, turtles, whales, cattle, birds, tap water, beer, salt, human placentas, semen, breast milk, feces, testicles, [...]
New Blood Test Detects Alzheimer’s and Tracks Its Progression With 92% Accuracy
The new test could help identify which patients are most likely to benefit from new Alzheimer’s drugs. A newly developed blood test for Alzheimer’s disease not only helps confirm the presence of the condition but also [...]
The CDC buried a measles forecast that stressed the need for vaccinations
This story was originally published on ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. ProPublica — Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [...]
Light-Driven Plasmonic Microrobots for Nanoparticle Manipulation
A recent study published in Nature Communications presents a new microrobotic platform designed to improve the precision and versatility of nanoparticle manipulation using light. Led by Jin Qin and colleagues, the research addresses limitations in traditional [...]
Cancer’s “Master Switch” Blocked for Good in Landmark Study
Researchers discovered peptides that permanently block a key cancer protein once thought untreatable, using a new screening method to test their effectiveness inside cells. For the first time, scientists have identified promising drug candidates [...]
AI self-cloning claims: A new frontier or a looming threat?
Chinese scientists claim that some AI models can replicate themselves and protect against shutdown. Has artificial intelligence crossed the so-called red line? Chinese researchers have published two reports on arXiv claiming that some artificial [...]
New Drug Turns Human Blood Into Mosquito-Killing Weapon
Nitisinone, a drug for rare diseases, kills mosquitoes when present in human blood and may become a new tool to fight malaria, offering longer-lasting, environmentally safer effects than ivermectin. Controlling mosquito populations is a [...]
DNA Microscopy Creates 3D Maps of Life From the Inside Out
What if you could take a picture of every gene inside a living organism—not with light, but with DNA itself? Scientists at the University of Chicago have pioneered a revolutionary imaging technique called volumetric DNA microscopy. It builds [...]
Scientists Just Captured the Stunning Process That Shapes Chromosomes
Scientists at EMBL have captured how human chromosomes fold into their signature rod shape during cell division, using a groundbreaking method called LoopTrace. By observing overlapping DNA loops forming in high resolution, they revealed that large [...]
Bird Flu Virus Is Mutating Fast – Scientists Say Our Vaccines May Not Be Enough
H5N1 influenza is evolving rapidly, weakening the effectiveness of existing antibodies and increasing its potential threat to humans. Scientists at UNC Charlotte and MIT used high-performance computational modeling to analyze thousands of viral protein-antibody interactions, revealing [...]
Revolutionary Cancer Vaccine Targets All Solid Tumors
The method triggers immune responses that inhibit melanoma, triple-negative breast cancer, lung carcinoma, and ovarian cancer. Cancer treatment vaccines have been in development since 2010, when the first was approved for prostate cancer, followed [...]
Scientists Uncover Hidden Protein Driving Autoimmune Attacks
Scientists have uncovered a critical piece of the puzzle in autoimmune diseases: a protein that helps release immune response molecules. By studying an ultra-rare condition, researchers identified ArfGAP2 as a key player in immune [...]
Mediterranean neutrino observatory sets new limits on quantum gravity
Quantum gravity is the missing link between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the yet-to-be-discovered key to a unified theory capable of explaining both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. The solution to this [...]
Challenging Previous Beliefs: Japanese Scientists Discover Hidden Protector of Heart
A Japanese research team found that the oxidized form of glutathione (GSSG) may protect heart tissue by modifying a key protein, potentially offering a novel therapeutic approach for ischemic heart failure. A new study [...]
Millions May Have Long COVID – So Why Can’t They Get Diagnosed?
Millions of people in England may be living with Long Covid without even realizing it. A large-scale analysis found that nearly 10% suspect they might have the condition but remain uncertain, often due to [...]
Researchers Reveal What Happens to Your Brain When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep
What if poor sleep was doing more than just making you tired? Researchers have discovered that disrupted sleep in older adults interferes with the brain’s ability to clean out waste, leading to memory problems [...]
