Identification of ADA as a Biomarker for Atypical Epstein Barr Virus Infection in Children.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore the ability of adenosine deaminase (ADA) to discriminate atypical Epstein Barr virus (EBV) infection in children from acute febrile illness. METHODS: All children admitted to the Children's Hospital of Soochow University between 2018 and 2019, who were acute febrile patients and subjected to the plasma EBV-DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) assay for EBV-specific antibodies assays. The diagnostic value of each detection index was compared by the area under the ROC curve. RESULTS: In children with atypical Epstein Barr virus infection, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and Youden index were 62.87%, 100.00%,100.00%, 61.73% and 0.63 for EBV-DNA PCR assay, 80.84%, 100.00%, 100.00%, 75.76% and 0.81 for VCA-IgG avidity and 89.22%, 87.00%, 91.98%, 82.86% and 0.76 for ADA. VCA-IgG avidity (AUC=0.904, P<0.01) and ADA (AUC=0.881, P<0.01) assays had the great diagnostic efficiency. In addition, the sensitivity, specificity and AUC were 92.75%,91.43% and 0.921(95%CI: 0.856-0.985) for ADA in the course≤3 days group, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: ADA has a good diagnostic value in the early stage of atypical EBV infection, and is not affected by primary EBV infection and reactivation. SCHLüSSELWöRTER: Adenosine deaminase, Epstein -Barr virus, Biomarker, children.

Epidemical and etiological study on hand, foot and mouth disease following EV-A71 vaccination in Xiangyang, China.

Coxsackievirus A6 (CV-A6) and Coxsackievirus A10 (CV-A10) have been emerging as the prevailing serotypes and overtaking Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) and Coxsackievirus A16 (CV-A16) in most areas as main pathogens of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in China since 2013. To investigate whole etiological spectrum following EV-A71 vaccination of approximate 40,000 infants and young children in Xiangyang, enteroviruses were serotyped in 4415 HFMD cases from October 2016 to December 2017 using Real Time and conventional PCR and cell cultures. Of the typeable 3201 specimen, CV-A6 was the predominant serotype followed by CV-A16, CV-A10, CV-A5, CV-A2 and EV-A71 with proportions of 59.54%, 15.31%, 11.56%, 4.56%, 3.78% and 3.03%, respectively. Other 12 minor serotypes were also detected. The results demonstrated that six major serotypes of enteroviruses were co-circulating, including newly emerged CV-A2 and CV-A5. A dramatic decrease of EV-A71 cases was observed, whereas the total cases remained high. Multivalent vaccines against major serotypes are urgently needed for control of HFMD.

Effectiveness and Safety of an Inactivated Enterovirus 71 Vaccine in Children Aged 6-71 Months in a Phase IV Study.

BACKGROUND: Evaluation of a licensed inactivated enterovirus type 71 (EV71) vaccine is needed in a phase IV study with a large population to identify its effectiveness and safety for further application. METHODS: An open-label, controlled trial involving a large population of 155 995 children aged 6-71 months was performed; 40 724 were enrolled in the vaccine group and received 2 doses of inactivated EV71 vaccine at an interval of 1 month, and the remaining children were used as the control group. The EV71-infected cases with hand, foot, and mouth disease were monitored in the vaccine and control groups during a follow-up period of 14 months since the 28th day postinoculation through the local database of the Notifiable Infectious Diseases Network. The effectiveness of the vaccine was estimated by comparing the incidence density in the vaccine group versus that in the control group based upon EV71-infected patients identified via laboratory testing. In parallel, the active and passive surveillance for safety of the vaccine was conducted by home or telephone visits and by using the Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) system, respectively. RESULTS: An overall level of 89.7% (95% confidence interval, 24.0-98.6%) vaccine effectiveness against EV71 infection and a 4.58% rate of reported adverse events were observed. Passive surveillance demonstrated a 0.31% rate of reported common minor reactions. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical protection and safety of the EV71 vaccine were demonstrated in the immunization of a large population. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: NCT03001986.

Online community detection for large complex networks.

Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society. To understand complex networks, it is crucial to investigate their community structure. In this paper, we develop an online community detection algorithm with linear time complexity for large complex networks. Our algorithm processes a network edge by edge in the order that the network is fed to the algorithm. If a new edge is added, it just updates the existing community structure in constant time, and does not need to re-compute the whole network. Therefore, it can efficiently process large networks in real time. Our algorithm optimizes expected modularity instead of modularity at each step to avoid poor performance. The experiments are carried out using 11 public data sets, and are measured by two criteria, modularity and NMI (Normalized Mutual Information). The results show that our algorithm's running time is less than the commonly used Louvain algorithm while it gives competitive performance.

Excellent performance for preferential CO oxidition over porous carbon supported IrFe catalysts.

By employing mesoporous carbon (MC), active carbon (AC), XC-72 and CMK-3 as the supports, we report carbon supported IrFe catalysts in the application of preferential oxidation of CO for the first time. The optimal activity was obtained over IrFe/MC, with a CO conversion of 83.5% at 80 degrees C. This activity became even better in the second run and achieved a CO conversion of 89.5% at 60 degrees C. The as-prepared catalysts have been characterized by N2 sorption isotherms, X-ray diffraction, high-resolution scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Mössbauer spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and H2 temperature programmed reduction. The promising PROX performance over the IrFe/MC can be attributed to the intrinsic surface properties of MC and its specific interaction with metal species.