"The Effect of Child Health on Schooling: Evidence from Rural Vietnam"

We study the relationship between long term child health and human capital. Child health may suffer if a child is inadequately nourished or is exposed to disease early in life and this may affect subsequent accumulation of human capital. We use data from rural Vietnam to examine the impact of child health on delay in starting school and schooling progress taking into account that choices of families affect children’s health and schooling. Our instrument is early life rainfall shocks that have differential effects arising from regional economic diversity. Our estimates indicate that better child health results in meaningfully improved schooling outcomes.child health, z-score, school entry delay, schooling gap, rainfall shocks, Vietnam

Property Ω and holomorphic functions with values in a pseudoconvex space having Stein morphism into a complex Lie group

It is shown that a nuclear Frechet space E with a Schauder basis has the property ΩF if and only if there exists a compact balanced convex set B in E such that every holomorphic function on (EB, τE), where EB is the Banach space spanned by B and τE is the topology of EB induced by the topology of E, with values in any pseudoconvex space having a Stein morphism into a complex Lie group, can be extended holomorphically to E. For the scalar case the proof was provided by Meise and Vogt [4]

The regularity of the space of germs of Fréchet valued holomorphic functions and the mixed Hartog's theorem

It is shown that $H(K, F)$ is regular for every reflexive Fréchet space $F$ with the property ($\mathrm{LB}_\infty)$ where $K$ is a compact set of uniqueness in a Fréchet-Schwartz space $E$ such that $E \in (\Omega)$. Using this result we give necessary and sufficient conditions for a Fréchet space $F$, under which every separately holomorphic function on $K \times F^*$ is holomorphic, where $K$ is as above

A randomized comparison of Chloroquine versus Dihydroartemisinin-Piperaquine for the treatment of Plasmodium vivax infection in Vietnam

A total of 128 Vietnamese patients with symptomatic Plasmodium vivax mono-infections were enrolled in a prospective, open-label, randomized trial to receive either chloroquine or dihydroartemisinin–piperaquine (DHA-PPQ). The proportions of patients with adequate clinical and parasitological responses were 47% in the chloroquine arm (31 of 65 patients) and 66% in the DHA-PPQ arm (42 of 63 patients) in the Kaplan–Meier intention-to-treat analysis (absolute difference 19%, 95% confidence interval = 0–37%), thus establishing non-inferiority of DHA-PPQ. Fever clearance time (median 24 versus 12 hours, P = 0.02), parasite clearance time (median 36 versus 18 hours, P < 0.001), and parasite clearance half-life (mean 3.98 versus 1.80 hours, P < 0.001) were all significantly shorter in the DHA-PPQ arm. All cases of recurrent parasitemia in the chloroquine arm occurred from day 33 onward, with corresponding whole blood chloroquine concentration lower than 100 ng/mL in all patients. Chloroquine thus remains efficacious for the treatment of P. vivax malaria in southern Vietnam, but DHA-PPQ provides more rapid symptomatic and parasitological recovery

Validating the ratio of insulin like growth factor binding protein 4 to sex hormone binding globulin as a prognostic predictor of preterm birth in Viet Nam: a case-cohort study

To validate a serum biomarker developed in the USA for preterm birth (PTB) risk stratification in Viet Nam. Women with singleton pregnancies (n = 5000) were recruited between 19+0-23+6 weeks’ gestation at Tu Du Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City. Maternal serum was collected from 19+0-22+6 weeks’ gestation and participants followed to neonatal discharge. Relative insulin-like growth factor binding protein 4 (IGFBP4) and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) abundances were measured by mass spectrometry and their ratio compared between PTB cases and term controls. Discrimination (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, AUC) and calibration for PTB Complete data were available for 4984 (99.7%) individuals. The cohort PTB rate was 6.7% (n = 335). We observed an inverse association between the IGFBP4/SHBG ratio and gestational age at birth (p = 0.017; AUC 0.60 [95% CI, 0.53-0.68]). Including previous PTB (for multiparous women) or prior miscarriage (for primiparous women) improved performance (AUC 0.65 and 0.70, respectively, for PTB 21 kg/m2 and age 20-35 years. We have validated a novel serum biomarker for PTB risk stratification in a very different setting to the original study. Further research is required to determine appropriate ratio thresholds based on the prevalence of risk factors and the availability of resources and preventative therapies.</p