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Background Little information is available on the costs of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in Vietnam or other low- and middle-income countries. Our study estimated the costs of LRTIs associated with RSV infection among children in southern Vietnam. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study evaluating household and societal costs associated with LRTIs stratified by RSV status and severity among children under 2 years old who sought care at a major pediatric referral hospital in southern Vietnam. Enrollment periods were September 2019–December 2019, October 2020–June 2021 and October 2021–December 2021. RSV status was confirmed by a validated RT-PCR assay. RSV rapid detection antigen (RDA) test performance was also evaluated. Data on resource utilization, direct medical and non-medical costs, and indirect costs were collected from billing records and supplemented by patient-level questionnaires. All costs are reported in 2022 US dollars. Results 536 children were enrolled in the study, with a median age of 7 months (interquartile range [IQR] 3–12). This included 210 (39.2%) children from the outpatient department, 318 children (59.3%) from the inpatient respiratory department (RD), and 8 children (1.5%) from the intensive care unit (ICU). Nearly 20% (105/536) were RSV positive: 3.9 percent (21/536) from the outpatient department, 15.7% (84/536) from the RD, and none from the ICU. The median total cost associated with LRTI per patient was US$52 (IQR 32–86) for outpatients and US$184 (IQR 109–287) for RD inpatients. For RSV-associated LRTIs, the median total cost per infection episode per patient was US$52 (IQR 32–85) for outpatients and US$165 (IQR 95–249) for RD inpatients. Total out-of-pocket costs of one non-ICU admission of RSV-associated LRTI ranged from 32%-70% of the monthly minimum wage per person (US$160) in Ho Chi Minh City. The sensitivity and the specificity of RSV RDA test were 88.2% (95% CI 63.6–98.5%) and 100% (95% CI 93.3–100%), respectively. Conclusion These are the first data reporting the substantial economic burden of RSV-associated illness in young children in Vietnam. This study informs policymakers in planning health care resources and highlights the urgency of RSV disease prevention.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of cancer treatment with chemotherapy for the trace elements in nails of patients with colorectal cancer. The contents of trace elements in the nails of 102 patients with colorectal cancer (including treated and untreated) and 60 healthy subjects were analyzed using k0-standardization method of neutron activation analysis. All participants aged between 32 and 76. Result of this study showed that the contents of nine trace elements (As, Br, Co, Cr, Hg, Fe, Sc, Se, and Zn) in the nails were measured. Furthermore, this study showed that there was significant difference in the contents of the elements Fe, Se, and Zn in both colon and rectal cancer patient groups between untreated and treated subjects with chemotherapy. We conclude that the contents of Fe, Se, and Zn in the nail samples may be used to evaluate of the colorectal cancer risk, and they may be affected by chemotherapy.

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of sodium sulfite (SoS) treatment of maize and its impact on the porcine immune system in the presence of an LPS-induced systemic inflammation. Control maize (CON) and Fusarium-toxin contaminated maize (FUS) were wet-preserved (20% moisture) for 79 days with (+) or without (−) SoS and then included at 10% in a diet, resulting in four experimental groups: CON−, CON+, FUS−, and FUS+ with deoxynivalenol (DON) concentrations of 0.09, 0.05, 5.36, and 0.83 mg DON/kg feed, respectively. After 42-day feeding trial (weaned barrows, n = 20/group), ten pigs per group were challenged intraperitoneally with either 7.5 μg LPS/kg BW or placebo (0.9% NaCl), observed for 2 h, and then sacrificed. Blood, mesenteric lymph nodes, and spleen were collected for phenotyping of different T cell subsets, B cells, and monocytes. Phagocytic activity and intracellular formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) were analyzed in both polymorphonuclear cells (PMN) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) using flow cytometry. Our results revealed that the impact of DON was more notable on CD3+CD4+CD8+ T cells in lymphoid tissues rather than in blood T cells. In contrast, SoS treatment of maize altered leukocyte subpopulations in blood, e.g., reduced the percentage and fluorescence signal of CD8high T cells. Interestingly, SoS treatment reduced the amount of free radicals in basal ROS-producing PMNs only in LPS-challenged animals, suggesting a decrease in basal cellular ROS production (pSoS*LPS = 0.022).

The aim of this study was to find trace elements that increase risk of breast cancer based on the deviation of the concentration of trace elements in the fingernail collected from the women with breast cancer and the normal women. The study was conducted with 10 elements (As, Au, Br, Co, Cr, Fe, Sb, Sc, Se, and Zn) using k0-INAA and statistical analysis method. Significant differences (P

This work is concerned with the Stokes flow of a fluid through the channel between two parallel solid walls, of which one is smooth and homogeneous and the other is periodically rough and heterogeneous. The main purpose of this work is to homogenize the resulting periodically rough solid/fluid interface so as to replace it by an equivalent smooth homogeneous solid/fluid interface characterized by appropriate effective slip lengths. To achieve this objective, a semi-analytic approach is elaborated by carrying out the Fourier expansions of the velocity and pressure fields in the plane normal to the thickness direction of the channel and by resorting to the point collocation method. In comparison with the relevant approaches reported in the literature, the present one has the advantage of being valid for the general case where the distance between the two parallel walls is arbitrary. With the help of the elaborated approach, the effective slip lengths are determined for a variety of periodically rough surface microstructures including, for example, longitudinal grooves, transverse grooves, chessboard texture and the Hashin–Shtrikman’s nested circles. The results obtained by the proposed semi-analytical approach are compared systematically with the ones provided by the finite element method and discussed in the light of some available bounds or analytical results. It follows from these comparisons and discussions that our semi-analytical approach is particularly efficient and accurate.

We propose a design of a silicon three-mode (de)multiplexing device based on a trident and two cascaded 3 × 3 multimode interferometers. Input lights at fundamental, first-order, and second-order modes of transverse electric (TE) polarization are simultaneously converted to fundamental TE mode and demultiplexed at different ports at the outputs. The design is carried out through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulation using three dimensional-beam propagation method and effective index method. The results show a successful three-mode multiplexing in 100 nm wavelength range around 1550 nm with low insertion loss (