Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, French Guiana

A systematic serological survey of patients suffering from symptoms suggestive of Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome allowed us to identify a native case in French Guiana. Partial molecular characterization of the implicated hantavirus revealed its close relationship with the Bolivian Rio Mamore virus. We tentatively named it Maripa virus

Evaluation of Two New Commercial Tests for the Diagnosis of Acute Dengue Virus Infection Using NS1 Antigen Detection in Human Serum

Dengue is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes that is endemic in more than 100 countries in tropical areas, threatening over 2.5 billion people. It causes a wide range of symptoms and has severe forms. In reference laboratories, dengue disease is confirmed by virus isolation or genome detection during the acute phase, and by serological methods during the early convalescent phase. The viral NS1 protein circulates in the sera of infected patients throughout the clinical phase of the disease. Novel diagnostic tests based on NS1 detection have been recently developed and marketed. We compared the performance of two tests for detecting dengue NS1 protein during the clinical phase of dengue infection (an immunochromatographic test (ICT) from Bio-Rad allowing rapid detection of the NS1 antigen and a two-step sandwich-format ELISA from Panbio) with the one-step sandwich-format microplate ELISA (Bio-Rad). The ICT test performed better than the ELISA test from Panbio. This study confirms that diagnostic tests based on NS1 could be used in routine clinical practice in poorly equipped laboratories and that dengue diagnosis could therefore be confirmed without the need for testing in reference laboratories. This represents a crucial step towards the control of dengue disease in the human population

Presentation, diagnosis and clinical course of the spectrum of progressive-fibrosing interstitial lung diseases

Although these conditions are rare, a proportion of patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) may develop a progressive-fibrosing phenotype. Progressive fibrosis is associated with worsening respiratory symptoms, lung function decline, limited response to immunomodulatory therapies, decreased quality of life and, potentially, early death. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis may be regarded as a model for other progressive-fibrosing ILDs. Here we focus on other ILDs that may present a progressive-fibrosing phenotype, namely idiopathic nonspecific interstitial pneumonia, unclassifiable idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, connective tissue disease-associated ILDs (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis-related ILD), fibrotic chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis, fibrotic chronic sarcoidosis and ILDs related to other occupational exposures. Differential diagnosis of these ILDs can be challenging, and requires detailed consideration of clinical, radiological and histopathological features. Accurate and early diagnosis is crucial to ensure that patients are treated optimally

Hmong Americans and Public Lands in Minnesota and Wisconsin

Natural resource managers and policy-makers need to understand the cultures and perspectives of ethnic minority communities in order to serve them effectively. In this exploratory study, we focus on Hmong Americans, perhaps the least-studied and -understood Asian ethnic group in the United States. The Hmong, who lived in the mountains of Laos,were relatively isolated until they were secretly recruited and armed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s to fight the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies (Warner 1998). When the Americans abruptly withdrew from Vietnam and Laos and the pro-American Royal Laotian government collapsed in 1975, the Hmong fled persecution and annihilation from the new communist regime. Laotian Hmong refugees came to the United States in the years following the war in Vietnam and Laos. The number of Hmong refugees grew rapidly in the late 1970s and reached a peak of about 27,000 admitted to the United States in 1980. The Hmong are now the third-largest Southeast Asian group in the U.S. after Vietnamese and Cambodian, with the largest Hmong populations in California (65,095), Minnesota (41,800) and Wisconsin (33,791) (HNDI and HCRC 2004). All other states have a combined total of only 28,742 Hmong

Zika Virus Persistence and Higher Viral Loads in Cutaneous Capillaries Than in Venous Blood

We collected venous and capillary serum samples from 21 Zika virus‒infected patients on multiple days after symptom onset and found RNA load was higher and median duration of virus detection significantly longer in capillary than in venous blood. These findings raise questions about the role of the capillary compartment in virus transmission dynamics

Techniques de routine et approches innovantes pour le diagnostic biologique de la dengue

International audienceDengue fever is a major public health problem in intertropical regions due to the concomitant increases in the frequencies of epidemics and of severe forms of the disease. In the absence of a vaccine, control methods are limited to vector-targeting approaches and early rapid differential diagnosis to improve disease surveillance in populations. Various techniques can be used to diagnose dengue virus infection, depending on the clinical phase during which samples are taken. However, some of these techniques have major disadvantages, ranging from the need to collect venous blood samples from children to serological cross-reactivity between the dengue virus and related viruses, making it difficult to interpret the results. Innovative diagnostic approaches have been developed to overcome these problems and to enlarge the range of available technical tools available: early, rapid detection of the viral NS1 antigen by immunocapture, capillary blood sampling as an alternative to venous blood sampling for diagnosis, the use of IgG avidity to discriminate between primary infection and re-infection and the use of recombinant proteins derived from the viral envelope protein to improve the sensitivity and specificity of immunoenzymatic techniques.La dengue constitue un problème majeur de santé publique dans les régions intertropicales du fait de l’augmentation concomitante des épidémies et des formes sévères de la maladie. Dans l’attente d’un vaccin, les moyens de contrôle restent la lutte anti-vectorielle et la mise en œuvre d’un diagnostic d’infection précoce, rapide et différenciel pour un meilleur suivi des populations. À ce titre, différentes techniques, dépendant de la phase clinique au cours de laquelle le patient est prélevé, peuvent être réalisées pour poser un diagnostic d’infection par le virus de la dengue. Cependant, certaines d’entres elles présentent des inconvénients majeurs allant de la simple réalisation d’un prélèvement veineux chez un enfant à l’existence de réactions sérologiques croisées entre le virus de la dengue et d’autres virus apparentés qui compromettent l’interprétation des résultats. Pour pallier à ces contraintes et élargir par là même l’éventail des outils techniques, de nouvelles approches diagnostiques ont été mises en œuvre : la détection précoce et rapide d’un antigène viral NS1 par immunocapture, le prélèvement de sang capillaire comme alternative au prélèvement veineux pour le diagnostic, l’avidité des IgG pour discriminer une infection primaire d’une réinfection par DENV ou encore l’utilisation de protéines recombinantes issues de la protéine d’enveloppe du virus pour une meilleure sensibilité et spécificité des techniques immuno-enzymatiques

Hmong Oral History Project : Documenting the Work Experiences of Hmong Refugees

Color poster with text and photographs.A team of Hmong students interviewed Hmong elders to record their stories about their early years in the U.S., with a focus on the elders’ labor‐market experiences. It was difficult for many Hmong refugees to find jobs after they arrived in the U.S., so their economic progress was slow, on average. These interviews provided examples of the challenges refugees encountered, the tradeoffs they faced between work and family, and their gradual progress over time. In the interviews in this project, Hmong elders shared the stories behind the statistical data. We are not aware of any previous scholarly work that has paired econometric analysis of refugees’ labor market experiences with qualitative data from interviews about work histories.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program