Saponin Inhibits Hepatitis C Virus Propagation by Up-regulating Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling 2

Saponins are a group of naturally occurring plant glycosides which possess a wide range of pharmacological properties, including anti-tumorigenic and antiviral activities. To investigate whether saponin has anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) activity, we examined the effect of saponin on HCV replication. HCV replication was efficiently inhibited at a concentration of 10 µg/ml of saponin in cell culture grown HCV (HCVcc)-infected cells. Inhibitory effect of saponin on HCV replication was verified by quantitative real-time PCR, reporter assay, and immunoblot analysis. In addition, saponin potentiated IFN-α-induced anti-HCV activity. Moreover, saponin exerted antiviral activity even in IFN-α resistant mutant HCVcc-infected cells. To investigate how cellular genes were regulated by saponin, we performed microarray analysis using HCVcc-infected cells. We demonstrated that suppressor of cytokine signaling 2 (SOCS2) protein level was distinctively increased by saponin, which in turn resulted in inhibition of HCV replication. We further showed that silencing of SOCS2 resurrected HCV replication and overexpression of SOCS2 suppressed HCV replication. These data imply that saponin inhibits HCV replication via SOCS2 signaling pathway. These findings suggest that saponin may be a potent therapeutic agent for HCV patients

Extremely Hot Ambient Temperature and Injury-related Mortality

This pilot study aimed to evaluate the effects of extremely hot ambient temperatures on the total number of fatal injuries. Data were collected from a population-based mortality registry of Thanh Hoa, a province in the North Central region of Vietnam. This study qualified the distributed lag non-linear model and calculated the RR and 95% CI adjusted for long-term trend and absolute humidity. For the entire study population with 3,949 registered deaths due to injuries collected during 2005-2007, after the onset of extremely hot ambient temperatures, an increased risk of death was observed on the 9th day RR (95% CI) = 1.44 (1.06–1.97) and reached the peak on the 12th day RR (95% CI) = 1.58 (1.14–2.17), and at the 15th day RR (95% CI) = 1.49 (1.08–2.06). Men and old adults were identified as the most vulnerable groups. This study confirmed a positive association between hot temperatures and injury-related deaths in the province of 3.6 million people. The findings motivated further investigation into the effect of warm climate changes and the risk of deaths related to other specific causes such as road traffic, work-related injury, and etc

Climate Services For Infectious Disease Control: A Nexus Between Public Health Preparedness And Sustainable Development, Lessons Learned From Long-Term Multi-Site Time-Series Analysis Of Dengue Fever In Vietnam

BACKGROUND: Climate services provide valuable information for making actionable, data-driven decisions to protect public health in a myriad of manners. There is mounting global evidence of the looming threat climate change poses to human health, including the variability and intensity of infectious disease outbreaks in Vietnam and other low-resource and developing areas. In light of the Sustainable Development Goals, this study aimed to examine the utility of spatial and time-series analysis, to inform public health preparedness strategies for sustainable urban development, in terms of dengue epidemiology, surveillance, control, and early warnings. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Nearly 40 years of spatial and temporal (times-series) dataset of meteorological records, including rainfall, temperature, and humidity (among others) which can be predictors of dengue were assembled for all provinces of Vietnam. This dataset was associated with case data reported to General Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health of Vietnam, during the same period. Time series of climate and disease variables were analyzed for trend and changing pattern over time. The time-series statistical analysis method sought to identify spatial (when possible) and temporal trend, seasonality, cyclical pattern of disease, and to discover anomalous outbreak events, which departed from expected epidemiological pattern, and corresponding meteorological phenomena, such as El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). RESULTS: Analysis yielded largely converged findings with other locations in South East Asia for larger outbreak years and events such as ENSO. Seasonality, trend, and cycle in many provinces were persistent throughout the dataset, indicating strong potential for climate services to be used in dengue early warnings. CONCLUSION: Public health practitioners, having adequate tools for dengue control available, must plan and budget vector control and patient treatment efforts well in advance of large scale dengue epidemics to curb such events with overall morbidity and mortality. Urban and sustainable development in Vietnam might benefit from evidence linking climate change and ill-health events spatially and temporally in future planning. Long term analysis of dengue case data and meteorological records, provided a cases study evidence for emerging opportunities that on how refined climate services, could contribute to protection of public health. Keywords: dengue, Vietnam, climate change, time-series analysis, climate servic

The Current State of Climate Change Perceptions and Policies in Vietnam: 2014 Report

This report was constructed to assess the current perceptions and policies regarding climate change in Vietnam. The report comprises a country report, outlining current policies relating to climate change, stakeholder mapping regarding climate change locally and nationally, and results from two stakeholder perception surveys conducted locally and nationally in Vietnam. A total of 50 stakeholders were interviewed, 25 locally and 25 nationally. The stakeholders in the survey represented government offices, universities, research institutions, NGOs, and farmers’ groups. Concerns about climate change impacts included drought, flooding, rainfall variation, and salinity intrusion. These concerns, as well as the methods in which stakeholders would like to receive climate information, varied between local and national stakeholders as well as by the type of institution that the stakeholder represented. This emphasizes a need for location- and user-specific responses to climate change

Gut Microbiome of Patients With Breast Cancer in Vietnam

PURPOSE: Gut microbiota play an important role in human health, including cancer. Cancer and its treatment, in turn, may alter the gut microbiome. To understand this complex relationship, we profiled the gut microbiome of 356 Vietnamese patients with breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Stool samples were collected before chemotherapy, with 162 pre- and 194 postsurgery. The gut microbiome was measured by shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Associations of gut microbial diversity, taxa abundance, and gut microbiome health index (GMHI) with sociodemographic, clinical factors, and tumor characteristics were evaluated. RESULTS: Postsurgery samples were associated with significantly lower α- and β-diversities ( CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that diagnosis delay, high fiber intake, and breast cancer surgery, which is always followed by antibiotic prophylaxis in Vietnam, led to a less diverse and unhealthy gut microbiome among patients with breast cancer

The Association Between Ambient Temperatures and Hospital Admissions Due to Respiratory Diseases in the Capital City of Vietnam

This study aimed to examine the short-term effects of ambient temperature on hospital admissions due to respiratory diseases among Hanoi residents. We collected 34,653 hospital admissions for 365 days (November 1, 2017, to November 31, 2018) from two hospitals in Hanoi. A quasi-Poisson regression model with time series analysis was used to explore the temperature-health outcome relationship's overall pattern. The non-linear curve indicated the temperatures with the lowest risk range from 22 degrees (Celcius) to 25 degrees (Celcius). On average, cold temperatures showed a higher risk than hot temperatures across all genders and age groups. Hospital admissions risk was highest at 13 degrees (Celcius) (RR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.26–1.54) for cold effects and at 33 degrees (Celcius) (RR = 1.21, 95% CI = 1.04–1.39) for the hot effects. Temporal pattern analysis showed that the most effect on respiratory diseases occurred at a lag of 0 days for hot effect and at a lag of 1 day for cold effect. The risk of changing temperature among women and people over 5 years old was higher than other groups. Our results suggest that the risk of respiratory admissions was greatest when the temperature was low. Public health prevention programs should be enhanced to improve public awareness about the health risks of temperature changes, especially respiratory diseases risked by low temperatures

Forager and farmer evolutionary adaptations to malaria evidenced by 7000 years of thalassemia in Southeast Asia

Thalassemias are inherited blood disorders that are found in high prevalences in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These diseases provide varying levels of resistance to malaria and are proposed to have emerged as an adaptive response to malaria in these regions. The transition to agriculture in the Holocene has been suggested to have influenced the selection for thalassemia in the Mediterranean as land clearance for farming encouraged interaction between Anopheles mosquitos, the vectors for malaria, and human groups. Here we document macroscopic and microscopic skeletal evidence for the presence of thalassemia in both hunter-gatherer (Con Co Ngua) and early agricultural (Man Bac) populations in northern Vietnam. Firstly, our findings demonstrate that thalassemia emerged prior to the transition to agriculture in Mainland Southeast Asia, from at least the early seventh millennium BP, contradicting a long-held assumption that agriculture was the main driver for an increase in malaria in Southeast Asia. Secondly, we describe evidence for significant malarial burden in the region during early agriculture. We argue that the introduction of farming into the region was not the initial driver of the selection for thalassemia, as it may have been in other regions of the world

Gender Differences in Climate Change Perception and Adaptation Strategies: The Case of Three Provinces in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta

The Policy Information and Response Platform on Climate Change and Rice in ASEAN and its Member Countries Project (PIRCCA) is one of the trial projects funded under Flagship 4. PIRCCA has an overarching goal to enable policymakers in ASEAN countries to make informed decisions on (1) food security policies focusing on the supply and availability of rice, (2) climate change adaptation policies, and (3) gender action plans

Mental health priorities in Vietnam: a mixed-methods analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Mental Health Country Profile is a tool that was generated by the International Mental Health Policy and Services Project to inform policy makers, professionals and other key stakeholders about important issues which need to be considered in mental health policy development. The Mental Health Country Profile contains four domains, which include the mental health context, resources, provision and outcomes. We have aimed to generate a Mental Health Country Profile for Vietnam, in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the Vietnamese mental health situation, in order to inform future reform efforts and decision-making.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study used snowball sampling to identify informants for generating a Mental Health Country Profile for Vietnam, and the data gathering was done through semi-structured interviews and collection of relevant reports and documents. The material from the interviews and documents was analysed according to qualitative content analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Marked strengths of the Vietnam mental health system are the aims to move toward community management and detection of mental illness, and the active involvement of several multilateral organizations and NGOs. However, there are a number of shortages still found, including the lack of treatment interventions apart from medications, the high proportion of treatments to be paid out-of-pocket, prominence of large tertiary psychiatric hospitals, and a lack of preventative measures or mental health information to the public.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>At the end of this decade, mental health care in Vietnam is still characterised by unclear policy and poor critical mass especially within the governmental sector. This initial attempt to map the mental health situation of Vietnam suffers from a number of limitations and should be seen as a first step towards a comprehensive profile.</p