Seroepidemiology and Carriage of Diphtheria in Epidemic-Prone Area and Implications for Vaccination Policy, Vietnam

In 2019, a community-based, cross-sectional carriage survey and a seroprevalence survey of 1,216 persons 1–55 years of age were conducted in rural Vietnam to investigate the mechanism of diphtheria outbreaks. Seroprevalence was further compared with that of an urban area that had no cases reported for the past decade. Carriage prevalence was 1.4%. The highest prevalence, 4.5%, was observed for children 1–5 years of age. Twenty-seven asymptomatic Coerynebacterium diphtheriae carriers were identified; 9 carriers had tox gene–bearing strains, and 3 had nontoxigenic tox gene–bearing strains. Child malnutrition was associated with low levels of diphtheria toxoid IgG, which might have subsequently increased child carriage prevalence. Different immunity patterns in the 2 populations suggested that the low immunity among children caused by low vaccination coverage increased transmission, resulting in symptomatic infections at school-going age, when vaccine-induced immunity waned most. A school-entry booster dose and improved infant vaccination coverage are recommended to control transmissions

A new species of Paracortina from a Vietnamese cave, with remarkable secondary sexual characters in males (Callipodida, Paracortinidae)

A new millipede species, Paracortina kyrang sp. nov., is described from a cave in Cao Bang Province, northern Vietnam. The new species is diagnosed by having an extraordinarily long projection on the head of males, reduced eyes, a gonocoxite with two processes, a long and slender gonotelopodite with two long, clavate prefemoroidal processes densely covered with long macrosetae apically, and with a distal, reverse, short spine on mesal side, and a rather sinuous distal part of the telopodite. This is the third species of the genus that is known from Vietnam. A brief comparison of some secondary sexual characters is made

LCSL: Long-tailed Classification via Self-labeling

During the last decades, deep learning (DL) has been proven to be a very powerful and successful technique in many real-world applications, e.g., video surveillance or object detection. However, when class label distributions are highly skewed, DL classifiers tend to be biased towards majority classes during training phases. This leads to poor generalization of minority classes and consequently reduces the overall accuracy. How to effectively deal with this long-tailed class distribution in DL, i.e., deep long-tailed classification (DLC), remains a challenging problem despite many research efforts. Among various approaches, data augmentation, which aims at generating more samples for reducing label imbalance, is the most common and practical one. However, simply relying on existing class-agnostic augmentation strategies without properly considering the label differences would worsen the problem since more head-class samples can be inevitably augmented than tail-class ones. Moreover, none of the existing works consider the quality and suitability of augmented samples during the training process. Our proposed approach, called Long-tailed Classification via Self-Labeling (LCSL), is specifically designed to address these limitations. LCSL fundamentally differs from existing works by the way it iteratively exploits the preceding network during the training process to re-label the labeled augmented samples and uses the output confidence to decide whether new samples belong to minority classes before adding them to the data. Not only does this help to reduce imbalance ratios among classes, but this also helps to reduce the uncertainty of class prediction problems for minority classes by selecting more confident samples to the data. This incremental learning and generating scheme thus provide a new robust approach for decreasing model over-fitting, thus enhancing the overall accuracy, especially for minority classes. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that LCSL acquires better performance than state-of-the-art long-tailed learning techniques on various standard benchmark datasets. More specifically, our LCSL obtains 85.8%, 54.4%, and 56.2% in terms of accuracy on CIFAR10-LT, CIFAR100-LT, and ImageNet-LT (with moderate to extreme imbalance ratios), respectively. The source code is available at https://github.com/vdquang1991/lcsl/.</p

Updated taxonomy and new insights into the evolutionary relationships of the genus Sporonchulus Cobb, 1917 (Nematoda, Mononchida) after the study of two Vietnamese species

Two known species of the genus Sporonchulus, namely S. ibitiensis and S. vagabundus, collected from natural areas of Vietnam, are characterized, including descriptions and illustrations of both species, as well as SEM observations and molecular (18S-, 28S rDNA) analyses of S. ibitiensis. The identity of the two species is discussed, with detailed comparison with previously known populations. The taxonomy of the genus is updated, presenting a diagnosis, list of species, key to their identification, and a compendium of their main morphometrics. An integrative analysis, combining morphological data with a cladistic approach and the first molecular study for a representative of Sporonchulus, better supports a narrow relationship of this genus with Mononchidae than with Mylonchulidae members, however further research should be conducted to elucidate its phylogeny

Virus diseases risk-factors associated with shrimp farming practices in rice-shrimp and intensive culture systems in Mekong Delta Viet Nam

In Mekong Delta, viral infection, including white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), monodon baculovirus (MBV), heptopancreatic parvovirus (HPV), infectious hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHHNV) and gill-associated nidovirus (GAV) frequently infect cultured shrimp starting at the postlarvae stage. These viral infections cause high mortality of shrimp and affect the farmer’s income. Previous studies mainly focused on the detection, transmission and genetic variation of the pathogens, but few studied the correlation between disease occurrence and other factors, including pond conditions, culture technique and management. Three studies analysed the association of culture factors with the WSSV disease incidence determining risk and potential protective factors in freshwater rice-shrimp systems, and brackish water polyculture and monoculture of black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon). Studies on the risk and protective factors in the odd of viral diseases in rice-shrimp rotation were lacking, while in 2011 the Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS)/Acute Hepatopancreatic Necrosis Syndrome (AHPNS) caused the great losses of cultured shrimp in Mekong Delta. This study was carried out to describe the culture status of shrimp in Mekong Delta and to identify the risk and/or protective factors that related to disease incidences in black tiger shrimp cultured in 2011. Through interviews, 58 variables collected from 191 farmers (64: rice-shrimp rotation and 127: intensive system) in Soc Trang and Bac Lieu Provinces, Viet Nam. The data were analysed in two steps of variable reduction to increase model stability and binary logistic regression to identify the risk and/or protective factors. The results showed that the risk factors were pond size (entire dataset, rice-shrimp rotation and intensive culture), settling pond (entire dataset), period of pond dry (entire dataset), stocking density first (rice-shrimp rotation), and stocking density second (rice-shrimp rotation). The potential protective factors were the mode of water intake (entire dataset), water level (entire dataset and rice-shrimp rotation), water quality parameters before stocking (entire dataset), and fry test (rice-shrimp rotation)

Induction of Mesoderm and Neural Crest-Derived Pericytes from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Study Blood-Brain Barrier Interactions

Summary: In the CNS, perivascular cells (“pericytes”) associate with endothelial cells to mediate the formation of tight junctions essential to the function of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB protects the CNS by regulating the flow of nutrients and toxins into and out of the brain. BBB dysfunction has been implicated in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the role of pericytes in BBB dysfunction in AD is not well understood. In the developing embryo, CNS pericytes originate from two sources: mesoderm and neural crest. In this study, we report two protocols using mesoderm or neural crest intermediates, to generate brain-specific pericyte-like cells from induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines created from healthy and AD patients. iPSC-derived pericytes display stable expression of pericyte surface markers and brain-specific genes and are functionally capable of increasing vascular tube formation and endothelial barrier properties. : While protocols to generate pericytes from hPSC lines exist, differentiation of brain-specific pericytes has not been reported. In this article, Faal and colleagues developed two robust and highly scalable methods relying on either mesoderm or neural crest induction to generate brain pericyte-like cells from hPSCs. Resulting cells express pericyte markers and brain-specific genes and improve barrier quality of endothelial cells. Keywords: pericytes, endothelial cells, human pluripotent stem cells, mesoderm, neural crest, blood-brain barrier, Alzheimer's diseas

Seasonal and geographical distribution of bacillary dysentery (shigellosis) and associated climate risk factors in Kon Tam Province in Vietnam from 1999 to 2013

Background: Bacillary dysentery (BD) is an acute bacterial infection of the intestine caused by Shigella spp., with clinical symptoms ranging from fever to bloody diarrhoea to abdominal cramps to tenesmus. In Vietnam, enteric bacterial pathogens are an important cause of diarrhoea and most cases in children under 5 years of age are due to Shigella strains. The serogroups S. flexneri and S. sonnei are considered to be the most common. The main objective of this study was to, for the first time, assess the seasonal patterns and geographic distribution of BD in Vietnam, and to determine the climate risk factors associated with the incidence of BD in Kon Tum Province, where the highest rate of bacillary dysentery was observed from 1999 to 2013. Methods: The seasonal patterns and geographic distribution of BD was assessed in Vietnam using a seasonaltrend decomposition procedure based on loess. In addition, negative binomial regression models were used to determine the climate risk factors associated with the incidence of BD in Kon Tum Province, from 1999 to 2013. Results: Overall, incidence rates of BD have slightly decreased over time (except for an extremely high incidence in 2012 in the north of Vietnam). The central regions (north/south central coast and central highlands) had relatively high incidence rates, whereas the northwest/east and Red River Delta regions had low incidence rates. Overall, seasonal plots showed a high peak in the mid-rainy reason and a second smaller peak in the early or late rainy season. The incidence rates significantly increased between May and October (“wet season”) across the country. In Kon Tum Province, temperature, humidity, and precipitation were found to be positively associated with the incidence of BD. Conclusions: Our findings provide insights into the seasonal patterns and geographic distribution of BD in Vietnam and its associated climate risk factors in Kon Tum Province. This study may help clinicians and the general public to better understand the timings of outbreaks and therefore equip them with the knowledge to plan better interventions (such as improving water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions) during peak seasons. This can, in turn, prevent or reduce outbreaks and onwards transmission during an outbreak

Seroepidemiology and Carriage of Diphtheria in Epidemic-Prone Area and Implications for Vaccination Policy, Vietnam

In 2019, a community-based, cross-sectional carriage survey and a seroprevalence survey of 1,216 persons 1–55 years of age were conducted in rural Vietnam to investigate the mechanism of diphtheria outbreaks. Seroprevalence was further compared with that of an urban area that had no cases reported for the past decade. Carriage prevalence was 1.4%. The highest prevalence, 4.5%, was observed for children 1–5 years of age. Twenty-seven asymptomatic Coerynebacterium diphtheriae carriers were identified; 9 carriers had tox gene–bearing strains, and 3 had nontoxigenic tox gene–bearing strains. Child malnutrition was associated with low levels of diphtheria toxoid IgG, which might have subsequently increased child carriage prevalence. Different immunity patterns in the 2 populations suggested that the low immunity among children caused by low vaccination coverage increased transmission, resulting in symptomatic infections at school-going age, when vaccine-induced immunity waned most. A school-entry booster dose and improved infant vaccination coverage are recommended to control transmissions