Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices Differ by Ethnicity of Vietnamese Mothers

Background: Limited studies have examined ethnic variation in breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices in developing countries. This study investigated ethnic variation in feeding practices in mothers with children 0–23 months old in Vietnam. Methods: We used data on 1875 women who came from the ethnic majority, Kinh (n = 989, randomly sampled from 9875 surveyed Kinh mothers, 10 % from each province) and three ethnic minorities: E De-Mnong (n = 309), Thai-Muong (n = 229) and Tay-Nung (n = 348). Ethnic minorities were compared with the Kinh group using logistic regression model. Results: Prevalence of breastfeeding initiation within an hour of birth was 69 % in Thai-Muong, but ~50 % in other ethnicities. In logistic regression, the prevalence of breastfeeding within one hour was lower in Tay-Nung (OR: 0.54; 95 % CI: 0.38, 0.77) than the majority Kinh. Prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding under 6 months was 18, 10, 17, and 33 % in Kinh, Thai-Muong, Tay-Nung, and E De-Mnong, respectively; compared to the majority Kinh, the prevalence was lower in Thai-Muong (OR: 0.42; 95 % CI: 0.25, 0.71) and higher in E De-Mnong (OR: 1.99; 95 % CI: 1.04, 3.82). Overall prevalence of bottle feeding in Thai-Muong and E De-Mnong (~20 %) was lower than in Kinh (~33 %): Thai-Muong (OR: 0.50; 95 % CI: 0.37, 0.68) and E De-Mnong (OR: 0.69; 95 % CI: 0.50, 0.95). Compared with Kinh (75 %), fewer ethnic minority children received minimum acceptable diets (33 % in Thai-Muong, 46 % in E De-Mnong, and 52 % in Tay-Nung; P \u3c 0.05). Prevalence of minimum acceptable diet (met both dietary frequency and diversity) was lower in Thai-Muong (OR: 0.23; 95 % CI: 0.11, 0.46), Tay-Nung (OR: 0.52; 95 % CI: 0.39, 0.69), and E De-Mnong (OR: 0.55; 95 % CI: 0.33, 0.89) than the majority Kinh. Conclusions: Breastfeeding practices were suboptimal and differed by ethnicity, which suggests need for tailored interventions at multiple levels to address ethnic-specific challenges and norms. Complementary feeding practices were less optimal among ethnic minorities compared to Kinh, which suggests need for broad intervention including improved food availability, accessibility, and security

Diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer's patients using classical and deep learning techniques

Machine based analysis and prediction systems are widely used for diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). However, lower accuracy of existing techniques and lack of post diagnosis monitoring systems limit the scope of such studies. In this paper, a novel machine learning based diagnosis and monitoring of AD-like diseases is proposed. The AD-like diseases diagnosis process is accomplished by analysing the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans using deep learning and is followed by an activity monitoring framework to monitor the subjects’ activities of daily living using body worn inertial sensors. The activity monitoring provides an assistive framework in daily life activities and evaluates vulnerability of the patients based on the activity level. The AD diagnosis results show up to 82% improvement in comparison to well-known existing techniques. Moreover, above 95% accuracy is achieved to classify the activities of daily living which is quite encouraging in terms of monitoring the activity profile of the subject

Prophylactic and Therapeutic Efficacy of Avian Antibodies against Influenza Virus H5N1 and H1N1 in Mice

Background: Pandemic influenza poses a serious threat to global health and the world economy. While vaccines are currently under development, passive immunization could offer an alternative strategy to prevent and treat influenza virus infection. Attempts to develop monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been made. However, passive immunization based on mAbs may require a cocktail of mAbs with broader specificity in order to provide full protection since mAbs are generally specific for single epitopes. Chicken immunoglobulins (IgY) found in egg yolk have been used mainly for treatment of infectious diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Because the recent epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) strain H5N1 has resulted in serious economic losses to the poultry industry, many countries including Vietnam have introduced mass vaccination of poultry with H5N1 virus vaccines. We reasoned that IgY from consumable eggs available in supermarkets in Vietnam could provide protection against infections with HPAIV H5N1. Methods and Findings: We found that H5N1-specific IgY that are prepared from eggs available in supermarkets in Vietnam by a rapid and simple water dilution method cross-protect against infections with HPAIV H5N1 and related H5N2 strains in mice. When administered intranasally before or after lethal infection, the IgY prevent the infection or significantly reduce viral replication resulting in complete recovery from the disease, respectively. We further generated H1N1 virus-specific IgY by immunization of hens with inactivated H1N1 A/PR/8/34 as a model virus for the current pandemic H1N1/09 and found that such H1N1-specific IgY protect mice from lethal influenza virus infection. Conclusions: The findings suggest that readily available H5N1-specific IgY offer an enormous source of valuable biological material to combat a potential H5N1 pandemic. In addition, our study provides a proof-of-concept for the approach using virus-specific IgY as affordable, safe, and effective alternative for the control of influenza outbreaks, including the current H1N1 pandemic

Differential spatial modulation for high-rate transmission systems

This paper introduces a new differential spatial modulation (DSM) scheme which subsumes both the previously introduced DSM and high-rate spatial modulation (HR-SM) for wireless multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmission. By combining the codeword design method of the HR-SM scheme with the encoding method of the DSM scheme, we develop a high-rate differential spatial modulation (HR-DSM) scheme equipped with an arbitrary number of transmit antennas that requires channel state information (CSI) neither at the transmitter nor at the receiver. The proposed approach can be applied to any equal energy signal constellations. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed HR-DSM schemes is evaluated by using both theoretical upper bound and computer simulations. It is shown that for the same spectral efficiency and antenna configuration, the proposed HR-DSM outperforms the DSM in terms of bit error rate (BER) performance

High Proportion of Genome-Wide Homology and Increased Pretreatment pvcrt Levels in Plasmodium vivax Late Recurrences: a Chloroquine Therapeutic Efficacy Study.

Chloroquine (CQ) is the first-line treatment for Plasmodium vivax malaria in most countries where malaria is endemic. Monitoring P. vivax CQ resistance (CQR) is critical but remains challenged by the difficulty to distinguish real treatment failure from reinfection or liver relapse. The therapeutic efficacy of CQ against uncomplicated P. vivax malaria was evaluated in Gia Lai Province, Vietnam. Sixty-seven patients were enrolled and followed for 42 days using microscopy and quantitative PCR. Adequate clinical and parasitological response (ACPR) was 100% (66/66) on day 28 but 75.4% (49/65) on day 42. Eighteen recurrences (27.7%) were detected, with a median time to recurrence of 42 days (interquartile range [IQR], 35 to 42) and blood CQ concentration of 98% identity by descent to paired day 0 samples. This study shows that CQ remained largely efficacious to treat P. vivax in Gia Lai; i.e., recurrences occurred late (>day 28) and in the presence of low blood CQ concentrations. However, the combination of both WGS and gene expression analysis (pvcrt) data with clinical data (PCT) allowed us to identify potential emergence of low-grade CQR, which should be closely monitored. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT02610686.)