Review of risk factors for human echinococcosis prevalence on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China: a prospective for control options

Objective: Echinococcosis is a major parasitic zoonosis of public health importance in western China. In 2004, the Chinese Ministry of Health estimated that 380,000 people had the disease in the region. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is highly co-endemic with both alveolar echinococcosis (AE) and cystic echinococcosis (CE). In the past years, the Chinese government has been increasing the financial support to control the diseases in this region. Therefore, it is very important to identify the significant risk factors of the diseases by reviewing studies done in the region in the past decade to help policymakers design appropriate control strategies. Review: Selection criteria for which literature to review were firstly defined. Medline, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), and Google Scholar were systematically searched for literature published between January 2000 and July 2011. Significant risk factors found by single factor and/or multiple factors analysis were listed, counted, and summarized. Literature was examined to check the comparability of the data; age and sex specific prevalence with same data structures were merged and used for further analysis. A variety of assumed social, economical, behavioral, and ecological risk factors were studied on the Plateau. Those most at risk were Tibetan herdsmen, the old and female in particular. By analyzing merged comparable data, it was found that females had a significant higher prevalence, and a positive linearity relationship existed between echinococcosis prevalence and increasing age. In terms of behavioral risk factors, playing with dogs was mostly correlated with CE and/or AE prevalence. In terms of hygiene, employing ground water as the drinking water source was significantly correlated with CE and AE prevalence. For definitive hosts, dog related factors were most frequently identified with prevalence of CE or/and AE; fox was a potential risk factor for AE prevalence only. Overgrazing and deforestation were significant for AE prevalence only. Conclusion: Tibetan herdsmen communities were at the highest risk of echinococcosis prevalence and should be the focus of echinococcosis control. Deworming both owned and stray dogs should be a major measure for controlling echinococcosis; treatment of wild definitive hosts should also be considered for AE endemic areas. Health education activities should be in concert with the local people's education backgrounds and languages in order to be able to improve behaviors. Further researches are needed to clarify the importance of wild hosts for AE/CE prevalence, the extent and range of the impacts of ecologic changes (overgrazing and deforestation) on the AE prevalence, and risk factors in Tibet

Fetal growth velocity standards from the Fetal Growth Longitudinal Study of the INTERGROWTH-21st Project.

BACKGROUND: Human growth is susceptible to damage from insults, particularly during periods of rapid growth. Identifying those periods and the normative limits that are compatible with adequate growth and development are the first key steps toward preventing impaired growth. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to construct international fetal growth velocity increment and conditional velocity standards from 14 to 40 weeks' gestation based on the same cohort that contributed to the INTERGROWTH-21st Fetal Growth Standards. STUDY DESIGN: This study was a prospective, longitudinal study of 4321 low-risk pregnancies from 8 geographically diverse populations in the INTERGROWTH-21st Project with rigorous standardization of all study procedures, equipment, and measurements that were performed by trained ultrasonographers. Gestational age was accurately determined clinically and confirmed by ultrasound measurement of crown-rump length at <14 weeks' gestation. Thereafter, the ultrasonographers, who were masked to the values, measured the fetal head circumference, biparietal diameter, occipitofrontal diameter, abdominal circumference, and femur length in triplicate every 5 weeks (within 1 week either side) using identical ultrasound equipment at each site (4-7 scans per pregnancy). Velocity increments across a range of intervals between measures were modeled using fractional polynomial regression. RESULTS: Peak velocity was observed at a similar gestational age: 16 and 17 weeks' gestation for head circumference (12.2 mm/wk), and 16 weeks' gestation for abdominal circumference (11.8 mm/wk) and femur length (3.2 mm/wk). However, velocity growth slowed down rapidly for head circumference, biparietal diameter, occipitofrontal diameter, and femur length, with an almost linear reduction toward term that was more marked for femur length. Conversely, abdominal circumference velocity remained relatively steady throughout pregnancy. The change in velocity with gestational age was more evident for head circumference, biparietal diameter, occipitofrontal diameter, and femur length than for abdominal circumference when the change was expressed as a percentage of fetal size at 40 weeks' gestation. We have also shown how to obtain accurate conditional fetal velocity based on our previous methodological work. CONCLUSION: The fetal skeleton and abdomen have different velocity growth patterns during intrauterine life. Accordingly, we have produced international Fetal Growth Velocity Increment Standards to complement the INTERGROWTH-21st Fetal Growth Standards so as to monitor fetal well-being comprehensively worldwide. Fetal growth velocity curves may be valuable if one wants to study the pathophysiology of fetal growth. We provide an application that can be used easily in clinical practice to evaluate changes in fetal size as conditional velocity for a more refined assessment of fetal growth than is possible at present (https://lxiao5.shinyapps.io/fetal_growth/). The application is freely available with the other INTERGROWTH-21st tools at https://intergrowth21.tghn.org/standards-tools/

Plasma antibodies against heat shock protein 70 correlate with the incidence and severity of asthma in a Chinese population

BACKGROUND: The heat shock proteins (Hsps) are induced by stresses such as allergic factors and inflammatory responses in bronchi epithelial cells and therefore may be detectable in patients with asthma. However, the etiologic link between anti-Hsps and asthma (its severity and related inflammatory responses such as interleukin-4 and immunoglobulin E) has not been established. We determined whether antibodies against Hsp60 and Hsp70 were present in patients with asthma and evaluated their associations with risk and severity of asthma. METHODS: We determined the levels of anti-Hsp60 and anti-Hsp70 by immunoblot and their associations with risk and symptom severity of asthma in 95 patients with asthma and 99 matched non-symptomatic controls using multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Compared to the controls, asthma patients were more likely to have detectable anti-Hsp60 (17.2% vs 5.1%) and anti-Hsp70 (33.7% vs 8.1%) (p ≤ 0.001). In particular, the presence of anti-Hsp70 was associated with a greater than 2 fold risk for asthma (adjusted OR = 2.21; 95% CI = 1.35~3.59). Furthermore, both anti-Hsp60 and anti-Hsp70 levels were positively correlated with symptom severity (p < 0.05) as well as interleukin-4 and immunoglobulin E (p < 0.05). Individuals with antibodies against anti-Hsp60 and anti-Hsp70 were more likely to have a family history of asthma (p < 0.001) and higher plasma concentrations of total immunoglobulin E (p = 0.001) and interleukin-4 (p < 0.05) than those without antibodies. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that anti-Hsp60 and especially anti-Hsp70 correlate with the attacks and severity of asthma. The underlying molecular mechanisms linking antibodies to heat shock proteins and asthma remain to be investigated

ncFANs: a web server for functional annotation of long non-coding RNAs

Recent interest in the non-coding transcriptome has resulted in the identification of large numbers of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in mammalian genomes, most of which have not been functionally characterized. Computational exploration of the potential functions of these lncRNAs will therefore facilitate further work in this field of research. We have developed a practical and user-friendly web interface called ncFANs (non-coding RNA Function ANnotation server), which is the first web service for functional annotation of human and mouse lncRNAs. On the basis of the re-annotated Affymetrix microarray data, ncFANs provides two alternative strategies for lncRNA functional annotation: one utilizing three aspects of a coding-non-coding gene co-expression (CNC) network, the other identifying condition-related differentially expressed lncRNAs. ncFANs introduces a highly efficient way of re-using the abundant pre-existing microarray data. The present version of ncFANs includes re-annotated CDF files for 10 human and mouse Affymetrix microarrays, and the server will be continuously updated with more re-annotated microarray platforms and lncRNA data. ncFANs is freely accessible at http://www.ebiomed.org/ncFANs/ or http://www.noncode.org/ncFANs/

Addressing Antimicrobial Resistance in China: Policy Implementation in a Complex Context

The effectiveness of antibiotics in treating bacterial infections is decreasing in China because of the widespread development of resistant organisms. Although China has enacted a number of regulations to address this problem, but the impact is very limited. This paper investigates the implementation of these regulations through the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS). It presents the findings from reviews of relevant policy documents and published papers. The paper identifies different types of agent and explores their interaction with regard to the use of antibiotics and their responses to changes of the regulations. It focuses particularly on the impact of perverse financial incentives on overall patterns of use of antibiotics. Implications for the possibilities of nonlinear results, interactive relationships, and new pathways of policy implementation are discussed. The paper concludes that policy-makers need to better understand the objectives, incentives and potential adaptive behaviors of the agents when they implement interventions to improve antibiotic use and reduce the risk of emergence of resistant organism

Volcanic–plutonic connection and associated Au‐Cu mineralization of the Tulasu ore district, Western Tianshan, NW China: Implications for mineralization potential in Palaeozoic arc terranes

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record Constructing the plutonic–volcanic connections in volcanic arc setting is essential for understanding a variety of magmatic processes from continental crust differentiation to formation of magmatic-hydrothermal ore deposits. Based on the combination of zircon U–Pb geochronology and Hf isotope and whole-rock geochemistry and Sr-Nd isotopes, we evaluated the potential connections between volcanic and plutonic rocks from the Tulasu Basin, the largest epithermal gold ore district in the Chinese Western Tianshan. The peak of volcanism coincides well with the major plutonism,representing an important magma event at ~347–367 Ma. These contemporaneous volcanic and plutonic rocks show broadly similar arc-related geochemical signatures and zircon in-situ Hf (εHf[t] =−1.0–14.3) and whole-rock Nd (εNd[t] =−4.2–4.6) isotopic compositions, indicative of formation from parental magmas derived from a common depleted mantle source metasomatized by slab-derived melts, despite diverse consequent processes (fractional crystallization, crustal contamination, and magma mixing/mingling) during their differentiation in a subduction-related setting. Volcanic rocks from the Axi caldera in the centre of the Tulasu district are geochemically less evolved than the coeval porphyritic granite, which indicates that the intrusive rocks might originate from residual melts left behind by extraction of erupted magmas. In contrast, the porphyry Cu mineralized Kexiaxi pluton, which occurs in the margin of the Tulasu district, is compositionally indistinguishable from the coeval volcanic suites. This implies that the Kexiaxi pluton represents the intrusive equivalent of a common magma reservoir feeding the volcanic eruptions, and magma fluxes may have controlled their differentiation. We thus suggest that the depleted mantle derived calc-alkaline magma, modified during slab-related melt metasomatism, crustal contamination, and magma mixing may have played an important role in copper enrichment at Kexiaxi. Finally, the relatively water-rich and fertile nature of arc magma of the Tulasu district indicates high exploration potential for significant porphyry Cu-Au deposits. The existing alteration-immobile fertility proxy (V/Sc) for intrusive rocks may also be useful to assess the fertility of cogenetic volcanic rocks, in turn with implications for unexposed porphyry Cu deposits at depths.European Commissio

Net primary productivity of forest stands in New Hampshire estimated from Landsat and MODIS satellite data

© 2007 Potter et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino