Epidemiology of Taenia saginata taeniosis/cysticercosis in the Russian Federation

BackgroundRussia is traditionally an endemic area for Taenia saginata infection, where a programme for the prevention of infection has been implemented for sixty years. This paper aims, therefore, to review the recent epidemiology data of Taenia saginata infection in the Russian Federation.MethodsWe undertook a systematic review of published and grey literature, and official data for information on the incidence, prevalence and distribution of Taenia saginata taeniosis and cysticercosis in the Russian Federation between 1st January 1991 and 31st December 2017.ResultsFrom the 404 records returned by our search strategy, we identified 17 official county reports, 17 papers and one meeting abstract on the occurrence of taeniosis or cysticercosis from the Russian Federation, eligible for inclusion in this study. In the Russian Federation, Taenia saginata infection has been continuously present and notifiable in the study period between 1991-2016. In the same area, a continuous decrease in the incidence of human taeniosis cases was observed, from 1.4 to 0.04 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, as well as a reduction in the territory where the infection is reported. The prevalence of bovine cysticercosis, ranging between 0.1-19.0%, generally has a declining trend, especially after 2005.ConclusionsImportance of Taenia saginata infection as a medical and veterinary problem has been decreasing in the 21st century but it is still an infection with health and economic impact in the Russian Federation

The Global Burden of Alveolar Echinococcosis

Human alveolar echinococcosis (AE), caused by the larval stage of the fox tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis, is amongst the world's most dangerous zoonoses. Transmission to humans is by consumption of parasite eggs which are excreted in the faeces of the definitive hosts: foxes and, increasingly, dogs. Transmission can be through contact with the definitive host or indirectly through contamination of food or possibly water with parasite eggs. We made an intensive search of English, Russian, Chinese and other language databases. We targeted data which could give country specific incidence or prevalence of disease and searched for data from every country we believed to be endemic for AE. We also used data from other sources (often unpublished). From this information we were able to make an estimate of the annual global incidence of disease and disease burden using standard techniques for calculation of DALYs. Our studies suggest that AE results in a median of 18,235 cases globally with a burden of 666,433 DALYs per annum. This is the first estimate of the global burden of AE both in terms of global incidence and DALYs and demonstrates the burden of AE is comparable to several diseases in the neglected tropical disease cluster

Optical Third-Harmonic Generation in Hexagonal Boron Nitride Thin Films

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a layered material that exhibits remarkable optical features in the UV, visible, and IR ranges, attractive for applications in modern photonics. Being transparent in a wide spectral range, hBN is now considered an important building block for novel integrated photonic platforms, thus requiring the study of its optical properties. In this work, we report on the measurements of hBN optical cubic nonlinearity χ(3) equal to 8.4 × 10-21 m2/V2 by observing the third-harmonic generation for 1080 nm pump wavelength from mechanically exfoliated hBN flakes with thicknesses varying from 5 to 170 nm. The third-order susceptibility of hBN is close to that of Si3N4 highlighting the potential of hBN for nonlinear applications