Reading and spelling Chinese among beginning readers: What skills make a difference?

The contributions of six important reading-related skills (phonological awareness, rapid naming, orthographic skills, morphological awareness, listening comprehension, and syntactic skills) to Chinese word and text reading were examined among 290 Chinese first graders in Hong Kong. Rapid naming, but not phonological awareness, was a significant predictor of Chinese word reading and writing to dictation (i.e., spelling) in the context of orthographic skills and morphological awareness. Commonality analyses suggested that orthographic skills and morphological awareness each contributed significant amount of unique variance to Chinese word reading and spelling. Syntactic skills accounted for significant amount of unique variance in reading comprehension at both sentence and passage levels after controlling for the effects of word reading and the other skills, but listening comprehension did not. A model on the interrelationships among the reading-related skills and Chinese reading at both word and text levels was proposed. © 2011 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.postprin

Reading and spelling Chinese among beginning readers: What skills make a difference?

The contributions of six important reading-related skills (phonological awareness, rapid naming, orthographic skills, morphological awareness, listening comprehension, and syntactic skills) to Chinese word and text reading were examined among 290 Chinese first graders in Hong Kong. Rapid naming, but not phonological awareness, was a significant predictor of Chinese word reading and writing to dictation (i.e., spelling) in the context of orthographic skills and morphological awareness. Commonality analyses suggested that orthographic skills and morphological awareness each contributed significant amount of unique variance to Chinese word reading and spelling. Syntactic skills accounted for significant amount of unique variance in reading comprehension at both sentence and passage levels after controlling for the effects of word reading and the other skills, but listening comprehension did not. A model on the interrelationships among the reading-related skills and Chinese reading at both word and text levels was proposed. © 2011 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.postprin

Zika Virus Infection in Dexamethasone-immunosuppressed Mice Demonstrating Disseminated Infection with Multi-organ Involvement Including Orchitis Effectively Treated by Recombinant Type I Interferons

published_or_final_versio

Development of an in ovo system for evaluation of antivirals against Zika virus

Poster Session 2 - no. 108Zika virus (ZIKV) infection may be associated with congenital malformations in infected fetuses and severe complications in infected adults. Rapid and reproducible viral culture systems are needed for evaluation of antivirals against ZIKV. Viral culture using chick embryos has been shown to be suitable for antiviral evaluation for other viruses because of the eggs’ large size, low cost, and potentially higher throughput than other ranimal models. We investigated whether chick embryos could support virus replication and facilitate antiviral evaluation for ZIKV. Inoculation of chick embryos with 0.2 ml (3.6 log plaque forming units/ ml) of either epidemic (ZIKV-Puerto Rico: ZIKV-PR, human isolate) or pre-epidemic ZIKV (ZIKV-Uganda: ZIKV-U, primate isolate) strains led to significantly higher mean viral loads in the brain (1.6-2.4 log10 copies/ml), muscle (1.2-2.4 log10 copies/ml), and viscera (0.3-2.1 log10 copies/ml) of the chick embryos (P≤0.018). No significant increase in mean viral load was observed in the egg yolk. Abundant ZIKV NS1 protein expression was seen in the brain, muscle, and viscera of ZIKV-inoculated chick embryos. Embryonic lethality was observed in all the ZIKV-inoculated chick embryos. Compared to untreated controls, addition of azithromycin led to a ≤0.88 log10 copies/ml reduction of mean viral load in ZIKV-inoculated chick embryos. These results corroborated with previous findings that showed the moderate in vitro anti-ZIKV activity of azithromycin in cell lines. Further optimization of this in ovo culture system would facilitate the development of therapeutic measures against the emerging ZIKV

Novel antiviral activity and mechanism of bromocriptine as a Zika virus NS2B-NS3 protease inhibitor

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection is associated with congenital malformations in infected fetuses and severe neurological and other systemic complications in adults. There are currently limited anti-ZIKV treatment options that are readily available and safe for use in pregnancy. In this drug repurposing study, bromocriptine was found to have inhibitory effects on ZIKV replication in cytopathic effect inhibition, virus yield reduction, and plaque reduction assays. Time-of-drug-addition assay showed that bromocriptine exerted anti-ZIKV activity between 0 and 12 h post-ZIKV inoculation, corroborating with post-entry events in the virus replication cycle prior to budding. Our docking model showed that bromocriptine interacted with several active site residues of the proteolytic cavity involving H51 and S135 in the ZIKV-NS2B-NS3 protease protein, and might occupy the active site and inhibit the protease activity of the ZIKV-NS2B-NS3 protein. A fluorescence-based protease inhibition assay confirmed that bromocriptine inhibited ZIKV protease activity. Moreover, bromocriptine exhibited synergistic effect with interferon-α2b against ZIKV replication in cytopathic effect inhibition assay. The availability of per vagina administration of bromocriptine as suppositories or vaginoadhesive discs and the synergistic anti-ZIKV activity between bromocriptine and type I interferon may make bromocriptine a potentially useful and readily available treatment option for ZIKV infection. The anti-ZIKV effects of bromocriptine should be evaluated in a suitable animal model

Improved detection of Zika virus RNA in human and animal specimens by a novel, highly sensitive and specific real-time RT-PCR assay targeting the 5'-untranslated region of Zika virus

Poster presentationBackground: Highly sensitive and specific laboratory diagnostics are especially important for controlling the rapidly expanding Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic, as the clinical features of ZIKV infection may be mild or indistinguishable from other arbovirus infections. Non-vector-borne transmissions may occur due to persistent virus shedding in ZIKV-infected patients’ urogenital tract, blood, and/or bodily fluids. Some existing RT-PCR assays utilizing primers/probes designed before the present epidemic emerged might misdiagnose up to 20-80% of ZIKV infected patients because of limited sensitivity and nucleotide mismatches. Methods: We developed and evaluated five novel real-time RT-PCR assays targeting conserved regions in the 5’ untranslated region (5’UTR), envelope (E’), non-structural protein 2A (NS2A), NS5, and 3’-UTR of the ZIKV genome. Results: The ZIKV-5’-UTR assay exhibited the lowest in-vitro limit of detection (5-10 RNA copies/reaction and 3.0 x 10-1 plaque-forming units/ml). Compared to the modified version of a widely adopted RT-PCR assay targeting the ZIKV-E gene, the ZIKV-5’UTR assay showed better sensitivity in human clinical specimens, and representative mouse specimens, including many organs which are known to be involved in human ZIKV infection but difficult to obtain in clinical settings. The ZIKV-5’UTR assay detected ZIKV RNA in all 84/84 (100.0%) ZIKV-E’-positive and an additional 30/296 (10.1%, P<0.01) ZIKV-E’-negative mouse specimens. The higher sensitivity of the ZIKV-5’UTR assay was most significant in kidney and testis/epididymis specimens (P<0.01). No in-vitro or in-vivo cross-reactivity was found between the ZIKV-5’UTR assay and other common flaviviruses/arboviruses. Conclusions: The highly sensitive and specific ZIKV-5’UTR assay may help to improve the laboratory diagnosis of ZIKV infection