Use of Potentially Inappropriate Medications in People With Dementia in Vietnam and Its Associated Factors

This study examined the use of potentially inappropriate medicines that may affect cognition (PIMcog) in people with dementia and its associated factors. Medical records of all outpatients with dementia attending a tertiary hospital in Vietnam between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2016, were examined. Medicine use was assessed against a list of PIMcog. Variables associated with having a PIMcog were assessed using a multiple logistic regression. Of the 128 patients, 41% used a PIMcog, 39.1% used cholinesterase inhibitors (CEIs) concomitantly with anticholinergics, and 18% used antipsychotics. The number of hospital visits (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 1.08; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02-1.16) and number of treating specialists (adjusted OR: 0.61; 95% CI: 0.45-0.83) were associated with PIMcog use. This study highlights a high-level use of medicines that can further impair cognition or reduce the effectiveness of CEIs in people with dementia. Efforts to improve quality use of medicines for this population are warranted. </jats:p

On-chip optical detection of viruses : a review

The current outbreak of the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic worldwide has caused millions of fatalities and imposed a severe impact on our daily lives. Thus, the global healthcare system urgently calls for rapid, affordable, and reliable detection toolkits. Although the gold-standard nucleic acid amplification tests have been widely accepted and utilized, they are time-consuming and labor-intensive, which exceedingly hinder the mass detection in low-income populations, especially in developing countries. Recently, due to the blooming development of photonics, various optical chips have been developed to detect single viruses with the advantages of fast, label-free, affordable, and point of care deployment. Herein, optical approaches especially in three perspectives, e.g., flow-free optical methods, optofluidics, and surface-modification-assisted approaches, are summarized. The future development of on-chip optical-detection methods in the wave of emerging new ideas in nanophotonics is also briefly discussed.Published versio

Multifunctional virus manipulation with large-scale arrays of all-dielectric resonant nanocavities

Spatial manipulation of a precise number of viruses for host cell infection is essential for the extensive studies of virus pathogenesis and evolution. Albeit optical tweezers have been advanced to the atomic level via optical cooling, it is still challenging to efficiently trap and manipulate arbitrary number of viruses in an aqueous environment, being restricted by insufficient strength of optical forces and a lack of multifunctional spatial manipulation techniques. Here, by employing the virus hopping and flexibility of moving the laser position, multifunctional virus manipulation with a large trapping area is demonstrated, enabling single or massive (a large quantity of) virus transporting, positioning, patterning, sorting, and concentrating. The enhanced optical forces are produced by the confinement of light in engineered arrays of nanocavities by fine tuning of the interference resonances, and this approach allows trapping and moving viruses down to 40 nm in size. The work paves the way to efficient and precise manipulation of either single or massive groups of viruses, opening a wide range of novel opportunities for virus pathogenesis and inhibitor development at the single-virus level.Ministry of Education (MOE)National Research Foundation (NRF)Y.S. acknowledges the support from the startup funding in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. WH220403019. Y.S. and A.Q.L. acknowledge the Singapore National Research Foundation under the Competitive Research Program (NRFCRP13-2014-01), the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 3 grant (MOE2017-T3-1-001). D.P.T. acknowledges the support from the UGC/RGC of HKSAR, China (Project No. AoE/P-502/20) and Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission Grant (No. SGDX2019081623281169). P.C.W. acknowledges the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan (Grant number: 107-2923-M-006-004-MY3; 108-2112-M-006-021-MY3; 110-2124-M-006-004), and in part from the Higher Education Sprout Project of the Ministry of Education (MOE) to the Headquarters of University Advancement at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). P.C.W. also acknowledges the support from the Ministry of Education (Yushan Young Scholar Program), Taiwan. Y.K. acknowledges a support from the Australian Research Council (grant DP210101292)