Expression of SUMO and NF-κB genes in hepatitis B virus-associated hepatocellular carcinoma patients: An observational study.

Alterations in signaling pathways and modulation of cell metabolism are associated with the pathogenesis of cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) proteins and NF-κB family play major roles in various cellular processes. The current study aims to determine the expression profile of SUMO and NF-κB genes in HCC tumors and investigate their association with the clinical outcome of HCC. The expression of 5 genes - SUMO1, SUMO2, SUMO3, NF-κB p65, and NF-κB p50 - was quantified in tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissues of 58 HBV-related HCC patients by real-time quantitative PCR and was analyzed for the possible association with clinical parameters of HCC. The expression of SUMO2 was significantly higher in HCC tumor tissues compared to the adjacent non-tumor tissues (P = .01), while no significant difference in SUMO1, SUMO3, NF-κB p65, and NF-κB p50 expression was observed between HCC tumor and non-tumor tissues (P > .05). In HCC tissues, a strong correlation was observed between the expression of SUMO2 and NF-κB p50, between SUMO3 and NF-κB p50, between SUMO3 and NF-κB p65 (Spearman rho = 0.83; 0.82; 0.772 respectively; P < .001). The expression of SUMO1, SUMO2, SUMO3, NF-κB p65, and NF-κB p50 was decreased in grade 3 compared to grades 1 and 2 in HCC tumors according to the World Health Organization grades system. Our results highlighted that the SUMO2 gene is upregulated in tumor tissues of patients with HCC, and is related to the development of HCC, thus it may be associated with the pathogenesis of HCC.

Clinical association and diagnostic significance of miRNA-29a and miRNA-147b in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Background: Micro RNAs (miRs) expression is involved in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study investigates the expression levels of plasma miR-29a, miR-146a, and miR-147b and their correlations with clinical parameters in patients with T2DM. Methods: 105 patients with T2DM who categorized either as newly diagnosed T2DM (n=52) or treated T2DM (n=53) and 93 healthy individuals were included in this study. The expression levels of miR-29a, miR-146a, and miR-147b were quantified by real-time PCR and analyzed for possible association with T2DM. Results: The expressions of miR-29a and miR-147b were significantly increased in T2DM patients compared with healthy controls (P<0.0001). The expression levels of miR-29a in newly diagnosed T2DM patients were higher than that in the group of treated T2DM (P=0.002). The expression of studied miRs was correlated with several clinical parameters such as blood glucose levels, HbA1C, microalbuminuria, C-peptide, triglyceride levels as well as the HOMA-ß index. The expression levels of miR-29a and miR-147b show a potential diagnostic performance to discriminate newly diagnostic T2DM (AUCs=0.77 and 0.84, respectively) and beta-cell dysfunction (AUCs= 0.62 and 0.75, respectively). Conclusions: The plasma miR-29a and miR-147b expression levels in T2DM patients are significantly associated with T2DM while miR-146a shows poor evidence in relation to T2DM. miR-147b shows potential as a biomarker for the diagnosis of T2DM and pancreatic beta cell dysfunction.

Complement receptor type 1 and 2 (CR1 and CR2) gene polymorphisms and plasma protein levels are associated with the Dengue disease severity.

The pathological outcome of dengue disease results from complex interactions between dengue virus (DENV) and host genetics and immune response. Complement receptor types 1 and 2 (CR1 and CR2) mediate complement activation through the alternative pathway. This study investigated the possible association of genetic polymorphisms and plasma levels of CR1 and CR2 with dengue disease. A total of 267 dengue patients and 133 healthy controls were recruited for this study. CR1 and CR2 gene polymorphisms were analyzed by Sanger sequencing, while plasma CR1 and CR2 levels were measured by ELISA. The frequency of the CR1 minor allele rs6691117G was lower in dengue patients and those with severe dengue compared to healthy controls. Plasma CR1 and CR2 levels were decreased in dengue patients compared to healthy controls (P < 0.0001) and were associated with platelet counts. CR1 levels were lower in dengue patients with warning signs (DWS) compared to those without DWS, while CR2 levels were decreased according to the severity of the disease and after 5 days (T1) and 8 days (T2) of follow-up. CR2 levels were decreased in dengue patients positive for anti-DENV IgG and IgM and patients with bleeding and could discriminate DWS and SD from dengue fever patients (AUC = 0.66). In conclusion, this study revealed a reduction in CR2 levels in dengue patients and that the CR1 SNP rs6691117A/G is associated with the dengue severity. The correlation of CR2 levels with platelet counts suggests that CR2 could be an additional biomarker for the prognosis of severe dengue disease.

The Biosafety Research Road Map: The Search for Evidence to Support Practices in the Laboratory-Mpox/Monkeypox Virus.

Introduction: The virus formerly known as monkeypox virus, now called mpoxv, belongs to the Orthopoxvirus genus and can cause mpox disease through both animal-to-human and human-to-human transmission. The unexpected spread of mpoxv among humans has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Methods: We conducted a literature search to identify the gaps in biosafety, focusing on five main areas: how the infection enters the body and spreads, how much of the virus is needed to cause infection, infections acquired in the lab, accidental release of the virus, and strategies for disinfecting and decontaminating the area. Discussion: The recent PHEIC has shown that there are gaps in our knowledge of biosafety when it comes to mpoxv. We need to better understand where this virus might be found, how much of it can spread from person-to-person, what are the effective control measures, and how to safely clean up contaminated areas. By gathering more biosafety evidence, we can make better decisions to protect people from this zoonotic agent, which has recently become more common in the human population.

Characterization of Antioxidant and α-Glucosidase Inhibitory Compounds of Cratoxylum formosum ssp. pruniflorum and Optimization of Extraction Condition.

Cratoxylum formosum ssp. pruniflorum (Kurz.) Gogel (Guttiferae), called kuding tea, is widely distributed in Southeast Asia. In this study, the constituents and biological activity of C. formosum ssp. pruniflorum were investigated. Extract of its leaves, roots and stems showed antioxidant and α-glucosidase inhibitory activity. Interestingly, comparison of the metabolite profiles of leaves, roots and stems of C. formosum ssp. pruniflorum by LC-MS analysis showed a great difference between the roots and leaves, whereas the roots and stems were quite similar. Purification of the roots and leaves of C. formosum ssp. pruniflorum through various chromatographic techniques resulted in the isolation of 25 compounds. The structures of isolated compounds were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analysis as 18 xanthones, 5 flavonoids, a benzophenone and a phenolic compound. Among them, a xanthone (16) and a benzophenone (19) were first reported from nature. Evaluation of biological activity revealed that xanthones had a potent α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, while flavonoids were responsible for the antioxidant activity. To maximize the biological activity, yield and total phenolic content of C. formosum ssp. pruniflorum, extraction conditions such as extraction solvent, time and temperature were optimized using response surface methodology with Box-Behnken Design (BBD). Regression analysis showed a good fit of the experimental data, and the optimal condition was obtained as MeOH concentration in EtOAc, 88.1%; extraction time, 6.02 h; and extraction temperature 60.0 °C. α-Glucosidase inhibitory activity, yield and total phenolic content under the optimal condition were found to be 72.2% inhibition, 10.3% and 163.9 mg GAE/g extract, respectively. These results provide useful information about C. formosum ssp. pruniflorum as functional foods for oxidative stress-related metabolic diseases.

Screening and treatment of brain metastasis from papillary thyroid carcinoma: a case series.

BACKGROUND: The brain metastasis from differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) is a rare condition and its prognosis is poor. The standard protocol for screening and treatment of patients with brain metastases from papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) remains controversial. This report aims to share the experience of a single center in the management of brain metastases from DTC. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Five patients with brain metastases were identified from 5000 patients with DTC attending the department of nuclear medicine, Hospital 108 between 2016 to 2022. The statistical software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Five patients with brain metastases from DTC were revealed by MRI, 18F-FDG PET/CT with contrast enhancement, and 131I-SPECT/CT. The median time of overall survival (OS) was 15 months, ranging from 10 to 65 months. Two out of the five patients underwent surgery, and futher 2 patients were treated with stereotactic surgery (SRS). All patients are still alive. CONCLUSIONS: Brain metastases from DTC are rare. MRI is the preferred imaging mobility to screen brain lesions in DTC. The primary treatment modalities are surgery and SRS.

Monkeypox Virus Infection in 2 Female Travelers Returning to Vietnam from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2022.

Mpox was diagnosed in 2 women returning to Vietnam from the United Arab Emirates. The monkeypox viruses belonged to an emerging sublineage, A.2.1, distinct from B.1, which is responsible for the ongoing multicountry outbreak. Women could contribute to mpox transmission, and enhanced genomic surveillance is needed to clarify pathogen evolution.

Machine Learning Algorithm for Distinguishing Ductal Carcinoma In Situ from Invasive Breast Cancer.

PURPOSE: Given that early identification of breast cancer type allows for less-invasive therapies, we aimed to develop a machine learning model to discriminate between ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and minimally invasive breast cancer (MIBC). METHODS: In this retrospective study, the health records of 420 women who underwent biopsies between 2010 and 2020 to confirm breast cancer were collected. A trained XGBoost algorithm was used to classify cancers as either DCIS or MIBC using clinical characteristics, mammographic findings, ultrasonographic findings, and histopathological features. Its performance was measured against other methods using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, precision, and F1 score. RESULTS: The model was trained using 357 women and tested using 63 women with an overall 420 patients (mean [standard deviation] age, 57.1 [12.0] years). The model performed well when feature importance was determined, reaching an accuracy of 0.84 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.76-0.91), an AUC of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.87-0.95), a specificity of 0.75 (95% CI, 0.67-0.83), and a sensitivity of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.76-0.94). CONCLUSION: The XGBoost model, combining clinical, mammographic, ultrasonographic, and histopathologic findings, can be used to discriminate DCIS from MIBC with an accuracy equivalent to that of experienced radiologists, thereby giving patients the widest range of therapeutic options.

Estimated population size of the people who inject drugs in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam: A two survey capture-recapture study using respondent driven sampling.

To develop an appropriate programmatic response to the concentrated HIV epidemic, program managers require reliable estimates of the sizes of the key populations. This study attempts to estimate the population size of people who inject drugs (PWID) in Thai Nguyen-a province in the northern part of Vietnam. Two source capture-recapture population size estimates were calculated using data from two respondent driven sampling survey rounds conducted in 5 selected districts from May to August 2019. The population size of the PWID was calculated based on the number of PWID recruited in each survey and 'recaptured' during the first and the second survey. Additionally, personal network size data collected in the RDS was used to measure the population of PWID using the Successive Sampling Population Size Estimate (SS-PSE) method. The population of PWID estimated in five selected districts using the two capture-recapture method (CRC) (median = 5,396, 95% CI: 4,011-9,100) was slightly lower than estimated using SS-PSE with RDS survey 1 (median = 5,580, 95% CI: 3,024-9,272) and higher than when using SS-PSE with RDS survey 2 (median = 4,793; 95% CI: 2,310-8,618). The provincial PWID population estimates based on various approaches (e.g. extrapolation based on the prevalence of PWID in the districts) ranged from 6,498 (95% CI: 4,829-10,957) to around 6,807 (95% CI: 5,341-10,527). A provincial estimate of 6,782 PWID, with a confidence interval ranging from 5,312 to 10,527, will help guide planning and resource allocation to support appropriate levels of HIV prevention, care, and treatment services in the Thai Nguyen province.

Prognostic significance of the angiopoietin-2 for early prediction of septic shock in severe sepsis patients.

Aim: The current study investigated the plasma levels of angiopoietin-1/-2 and their association with clinical outcomes of sepsis. Methods: Angiopoietin-1 and -2 levels were quantified in plasma from 105 patients with severe sepsis by ELISA. Results: Angiopoietin-2 levels elevated according to the severity of sepsis progression. Angiopoietin-2 levels were correlated with mean arterial pressure and platelets counts, total bilirubin, creatinine, procalcitonin, lactate levels and SOFA score. Angiopoietin-2 levels accurately discriminated for sepsis with an AUC = 0.97 and septic shock from severe sepsis patients (AUC = 0.778). Conclusion: Plasma angiopoietin-2 levels may serve as an additional biomarker for severe sepsis and septic shock.

The study investigated the plasma levels of angiopoietin-1/-2 and their association with clinical outcomes of sepsis in plasma from 105 patients with severe sepsis by ELISA. The results showed that angiopoietin-2 levels elevated according to the severity of sepsis progression and were correlated with important clinical parameters such as mean arterial pressure and platelets counts, procalcitonin, lactate levels and SOFA score. Angiopoietin-2 levels accurately discriminated for sepsis and septic shock. Thus, plasma angiopoietin-2 levels may serve as an additional biomarker for severe sepsis and septic shock.

CD34 protein is expressed in murine, canine, and porcine lungs.

The cell surface protein CD34 is expressed in various human tissues and cells, including hematopoietic stem cells, vascular endothelial cells, mucosal dendritic cells, mast cells, eosinophils, microglia, fibrocytes, muscle satellite cells, and platelets. There is a lack of data on the expression of CD34 in canine and porcine tissues. Therefore, we designed a series of immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence experiments to observe CD34 expression in murine, canine, and porcine lungs. We used a rabbit antibody (clone EP373Y) to target the conserved human CD34 C-terminal region and validated its immunoreactivity against mouse lung homogenates. The data showed diffuse bronchiolar and alveolar epithelial localization of CD34 protein in normal murine, canine, and porcine lungs. At 9 or 24 h after bacterial endotoxin exposure, murine CD34 protein shifted to specific bronchoalveolar cells with a punctate pattern, as quantified by CD34 fluorescence. Specific porcine bronchoalveolar cells and leukocytes had significant CD34-positive immunostaining after H3N1 influenza infection. Thus, our study provides fundamental data on the expression of CD34 in lungs and validates an antibody for use in further experiments in these animal species.

La protéine de surface cellulaire CD34 est exprimée dans divers tissus et cellules humains, y compris les cellules souches hématopoïétiques, les cellules endothéliales vasculaires, les cellules dendritiques des muqueuses, les mastocytes, les éosinophiles, la microglie, les fibrocytes, les cellules satellites musculaires et les plaquettes. Il existe un manque de données sur l'expression de CD34 dans les tissus canins et porcins. Par conséquent, nous avons conçu une série d'expériences d'immunobuvardage, d'immunohistochimie et d'immunofluorescence pour observer l'expression de CD34 dans les poumons murins, canins et porcins. Nous avons utilisé un anticorps de lapin (clone EP373Y) pour cibler la région C-terminale conservée du CD34 humain et validé son immunoréactivité contre des homogénats pulmonaires de souris. Les données ont montré une localisation épithéliale bronchiolaire et alvéolaire diffuse de la protéine CD34 dans les poumons normaux murins, canins et porcins. À 9 ou 24 h après l'exposition à l'endotoxine bactérienne, la protéine CD34 murine s'est déplacée vers des cellules bronchoalvéolaires spécifiques avec un motif ponctué, tel que quantifié par la fluorescence envers CD34. Des cellules bronchoalvéolaires et des leucocytes porcins spécifiques présentaient une immunocoloration significativement positive pour CD34 après une infection par le virus de l'influenza H3N1. Ainsi, notre étude fournit des données fondamentales sur l'expression de CD34 dans les poumons et valide un anticorps à utiliser dans d'autres expériences chez ces espèces animales.(Traduit par Docteur Serge Messier).

Genome-Wide Association Mapping of Salinity Tolerance at the Seedling Stage in a Panel of Vietnamese Landraces Reveals New Valuable QTLs for Salinity Stress Tolerance Breeding in Rice.

Rice tolerance to salinity stress involves diverse and complementary mechanisms, such as the regulation of genome expression, activation of specific ion-transport systems to manage excess sodium at the cell or plant level, and anatomical changes that avoid sodium penetration into the inner tissues of the plant. These complementary mechanisms can act synergistically to improve salinity tolerance in the plant, which is then interesting in breeding programs to pyramidize complementary QTLs (quantitative trait loci), to improve salinity stress tolerance of the plant at different developmental stages and in different environments. This approach presupposes the identification of salinity tolerance QTLs associated with different mechanisms involved in salinity tolerance, which requires the greatest possible genetic diversity to be explored. To contribute to this goal, we screened an original panel of 179 Vietnamese rice landraces genotyped with 21,623 SNP markers for salinity stress tolerance under 100 mM NaCl treatment, at the seedling stage, with the aim of identifying new QTLs involved in the salinity stress tolerance via a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Nine salinity tolerance-related traits, including the salt injury score, chlorophyll and water content, and K+ and Na+ contents were measured in leaves. GWAS analysis allowed the identification of 26 QTLs. Interestingly, ten of them were associated with several different traits, which indicates that these QTLs act pleiotropically to control the different levels of plant responses to salinity stress. Twenty-one identified QTLs colocalized with known QTLs. Several genes within these QTLs have functions related to salinity stress tolerance and are mainly involved in gene regulation, signal transduction or hormone signaling. Our study provides promising QTLs for breeding programs to enhance salinity tolerance and identifies candidate genes that should be further functionally studied to better understand salinity tolerance mechanisms in rice.

Adapting ENABLE for patients with advanced cancer and their family caregivers in Singapore: a qualitative formative evaluation.

BACKGROUND: ENABLE (Educate, Nurture, Advise, Before Life Ends) is a nurse coach-led, early palliative care model for patients with advanced cancer and their family caregivers. Content covered includes problem-solving, advance care planning, symptom management and self-care. The aim was to evaluate the cultural acceptability of ENABLE among patients with advanced cancer and their caregivers in Singapore and identify modifications for an adapted ENABLE-SG model. METHODS: Qualitative formative evaluation with a thematic analysis approach in two hospitals in Singapore, involving patients (n = 10), family caregivers (n = 11) and healthcare professionals (n = 10) who care for patients with advanced cancer. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore (i) the main needs and challenges facing individuals with advanced cancer and their family caregivers; (ii) patient involvement in healthcare decision making; and (iii) content and delivery of ENABLE. RESULTS: While physical needs were largely well met, participants expressed that psychosocial care was delivered too late in the illness trajectory. Healthcare decision making approaches varied from a patient-centred shared decision-making model to a family-centred model where patients may not know their cancer diagnosis and prognosis. The content was considered to be relevant, comprehensive and practical; financial assistance, adjustment to body image, and evaluation of complementary therapy were also recommended. Face-to-face rather than telephone sessions were preferred to facilitate rapport building. CONCLUSIONS: ENABLE was broadly acceptable with some modifications, including adjusting the content to ensure it can be delivered even if the patient is not fully aware of cancer diagnosis and delivering the first session face-to-face with flexibility for subsequent sessions.

FAD-BERT: Improved prediction of FAD binding sites using pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers.

The electron transport chain is a series of protein complexes embedded in the process of cellular respiration, which is an important process to transfer electrons and other macromolecules throughout the cell. Identifying Flavin Adenine Dinucleotide (FAD) binding sites in the electron transport chain is vital since it helps biological researchers precisely understand how electrons are produced and are transported in cells. This study distills and analyzes the contextualized word embedding from pre-trained BERT models to explore similarities in natural language and protein sequences. Thereby, we propose a new approach based on Pre-training of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), Position-specific Scoring Matrix profiles (PSSM), Amino Acid Index database (AAIndex) to predict FAD-binding sites from the transport proteins which are found in nature recently. Our proposed approach archives 85.14% accuracy and improves accuracy by 11%, with Matthew's correlation coefficient of 0.39 compared to the previous method on the same independent set. We also deploy a web server that identifies FAD-binding sites in electron transporters available for academics at http://140.138.155.216/fadbert/.

Classification of adaptor proteins using recurrent neural networks and PSSM profiles.

BACKGROUND: Adaptor proteins are carrier proteins that play a crucial role in signal transduction. They commonly consist of several modular domains, each having its own binding activity and operating by forming complexes with other intracellular-signaling molecules. Many studies determined that the adaptor proteins had been implicated in a variety of human diseases. Therefore, creating a precise model to predict the function of adaptor proteins is one of the vital tasks in bioinformatics and computational biology. Few computational biology studies have been conducted to predict the protein functions, and in most of those studies, position specific scoring matrix (PSSM) profiles had been used as the features to be fed into the neural networks. However, the neural networks could not reach the optimal result because the sequential information in PSSMs has been lost. This study proposes an innovative approach by incorporating recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and PSSM profiles to resolve this problem. RESULTS: Compared to other state-of-the-art methods which had been applied successfully in other problems, our method achieves enhancement in all of the common measurement metrics. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) metric in prediction of adaptor proteins in the cross-validation and independent datasets are 0.893 and 0.853, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study opens a research path that can promote the use of RNNs and PSSM profiles in bioinformatics and computational biology. Our approach is reproducible by scientists that aim to improve the performance results of different protein function prediction problems. Our source code and datasets are available at https://github.com/ngphubinh/adaptors.

Anatomical Characteristics and Variants of Prostatic Artery in Patients of Benign Hyperplasia Prostate by Digital Subtraction Angiography.

AIM: This work is aimed to describe anatomical features and variants of the prostatic artery (PA) using digital subtraction angiography (DSA). METHODS: This is a descriptive statistic study. We reviewed the DSA of 348 patients, who had a PA embolisation to reduce the benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) symptoms at Radiology Department of Bach Mai Hospital from Oct - 2014 to Oct - 2018. RESULTS: PA was found at 660 pelvic halves, of which 30 pelvic halves (4.5%) had two PAs, 630 pelvic halves had one PA. In terms of the origin of PA, in total 690 PAs, the percentage of type 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 was successively 33.9%, 13.9%, 18.3%, 23.9% and 10.4%, respectively. Atherosclerosis of PA observed in 20.9%. The 'corkscrew' pattern was found in 30.4%. The average diameter of PA was 1.5 ± 0.34mm. The anastomosis of PA with surrounding arteries was common. PA may supply rectum (6.1%), seminal vesical (9.6%), bladder (5.2%), contralateral prostatic parenchyma (13.0%), surrounding soft-tissues (3.5%). CONCLUSION: The common trunk with SVA superior vesical artery was the most common origin of PA. Anastomoses of PA with surrounding tissues were complex.

Next-Generation Sequencing Accelerates Crop Gene Discovery.

The identification and isolation of genes underlying quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with agronomic traits in crops have been recently accelerated thanks to next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based technologies combined with plant genetics. With NGS, various revisited genetic approaches, which benefited from higher marker density, have been elaborated. These approaches improved resolution in QTL position and assisted in determining functional causative variations in genes. Examples of QTLs/genes associated with agronomic traits in crops and identified using different strategies based on whole-genome sequencing (WGS)/whole-genome resequencing (WGR) or RNA-seq are presented and discussed in this review. More specifically, we summarize and illustrate how NGS boosted bulk-segregant analysis (BSA), expression profiling, and the construction of polymorphism databases to facilitate the detection of QTLs and causative genes.

The Consumption of Dairy and Its Association with Nutritional Status in the South East Asian Nutrition Surveys (SEANUTS).

Despite a major decrease in undernutrition worldwide over the last 25 years, underweight and stunting in children still persist as public health issues especially in Africa and Asia. Adequate nutrition is one of the key factors for healthy growth and development of children. In this study, the associations between dairy consumption and nutritional status in the South East Asian Nutrition Survey (SEANUTS) were investigated. National representative data of 12,376 children in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam aged between 1 and 12 years were pooled, representing nearly 88 million children in this age category. It was found that the prevalence of stunting and underweight was lower in children who consumed dairy on a daily basis (10.0% and 12.0%, respectively) compared to children who did not use dairy (21.4% and 18.0%, respectively) (p < 0.05). The prevalence of vitamin A deficiency and vitamin D insufficiency was lower in the group of dairy users (3.9% and 39.4%, respectively) compared to non-dairy consumers (7.5% and 53.8%, respectively) (p < 0.05). This study suggests that dairy as part of a daily diet plays an important role in growth and supports a healthy vitamin A and vitamin D status.

Surveillance of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) for Hospitalized Patients in Northern Vietnam, 2011-2014.

Severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) are leading causes of hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality in children worldwide. The aim of this study was to identify viral pathogens responsible for SARI in northern Vietnam in the period from 2011 to 2014. Throat swabs and tracheal aspirates were collected from SARI patients according to WHO guidelines. The presence of 13 different viral pathogens (influenza A[H1N1]pdm09; A/H3N2; A/H5; A/H7 and B; para influenza 1,2,3; RSV; HMPV; adeno; severe acute respiratory syndrome-CoV and rhino) was tested by conventional/real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. During the study period, 975 samples were collected and tested. More than 30% (32.1%, 313 samples) of the samples showed evidence of infection with influenza viruses, including A/H3N2 (48 samples), A (H1N1) pdm09 (221 samples), influenza B (42 samples), and co-infection of A (H1N1) pdm09 or A/H3N2 and influenza B (2 samples). Other respiratory pathogens were detected in 101 samples, including rhinovirus (73 samples), adenovirus (10 samples), hMPV (9 samples), parainfluenza 3 (5 samples), parainfluenza 2 (3 samples), and RSV (1 sample). Influenza A/H5, A/H7, or SARS-CoV were not detected. Respiratory viral infection, particularly infection of influenza and rhinoviruses, were associated with high rates of SARI hospitalization, and future studies correlating the clinical aspects are needed to design interventions, including targeted vaccination.