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African swine fever (ASF) is an acute infectious disease with a high mortality rate in both domestic and wild boars. Commercial vaccines or antiviral drugs for ASF were not available due to the complex diversity of the structure and genome of its pathogen African swine fever virus (ASFV). In recent years, there have been many reports on candidate strains of attenuated vaccines for ASFV. In this study, we obtained a recombinant virus named SY18ΔL60LΔCD2v by simultaneously deleting the L60L gene and CD2v gene from highly virulent strain SY18. In vitro, SY18ΔL60LΔCD2v displayed a decreased growth kinetic compared to that of parental SY18. In vivo, high doses (105 TCID50) of SY18ΔL60LΔCD2v can protect pigs (5/5) from attacks by the parental SY18 strain (102 TCID50). Low doses (102 TCID50) of SY18ΔL60LΔCD2v only protected 20% of pigs (1/5) from attacks by the parental SY18 strain (102 TCID50). The results indicated that the absence of these two genes in SY18 could induce protection against the homologous parental strain, and there were no obvious clinical symptoms or viremia. These results indicate that the SY18ΔL60LΔCD2v strain can serve as a new live attenuated vaccine candidate for the prevention and control of ASFV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dysphagia is one of the major post‐stroke complications, understanding post‐stroke changes in cortical excitability and promoting early remodeling of swallowing‐related cortical areas to enable accurate treatment is essential for recovery of patients. Objectives: We aimed to investigate hemodynamic signal changes and functional connectivity in acute stroke patients with dysphagia compared to age‐matched healthy participants in response to volitional swallowing using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in this pilot study. Methods: Patients with first‐ever post‐stroke dysphagia having an onset of 1–4 weeks and age‐matched right‐handed healthy subjects were recruited in our study. fNIRS with 47 channels was utilized to detect the oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) and reduced hemoglobin (HbR) concentration changes when volitional swallowing. Cohort analysis was performed by a one‐sample t‐test. Two‐sample t‐test was utilized to compare the difference in cortical activation between patients with post‐stroke dysphagia and healthy subjects. Furthermore, the relative changes in the concentration of the HbO2 throughout the experimental procedure were extracted for the functional connectivity analysis. The Pearson correlation coefficients of the HbO2 concentration of each channel were analyzed on a time series, and then a Fisher Z transformation was then performed, and the transformed values were defined as the functional connection strengths between the channels. Results: In this present study, a total of nine patients with acute post‐stroke dysphagia were enrolled in the patient group and nine age‐matched healthy participants in the healthy control group. Our study observed that the extensive regions of the cerebral cortex were activated in the healthy control group, while the activation area of patient group's cortical regions was quite limited. The mean functional connectivity strength of participants was 0.485 ± 0.105 in the healthy control group, and 0.252 ± 0.146 in the patient group, with a significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.001). Conclusion: Compared to the healthy individuals, cerebral cortex regions of acute stroke patients were only marginally activated during volitional swallowing task, and the average functional connectivity strength of cortical network in patients was relatively weaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family Reoviridae is a diverse group of viruses with double-stranded RNA genomes contained within icosahedral, nonenveloped, double-layered, protein capsids (1). Members of the genus Orthoreovirus contain 10 genome segments [...]

To the Editor: Parainfluenza virus 5 (PIV5), family Paramyxoviridae, genus Rubulavirus, was previously known as simian virus 5 because of its discovery in primary monkey kidney cells in 1954 (1). [...]

The record of rabies in Chinese history dates back to 556 BC in Master Zuo's tradition of the Spring and Autumn annals. He wrote, "In the eleventh month, people in [...]

Rabies is an acute encephalomyelitis caused by rabies or rabies-related viruses. Although dogs are the main reservoir worldwide, all mammals are believed to be susceptible. When rabies is widely distributed, [...]

African swine fever is an acute, haemorrhagic fever and contagious disease of pigs caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV), which has a great impact on the pig farming industry and related international trade. Understanding the response processes of various tissues in pigs after ASFV infection may help to address current major concerns, such as the exploration of key genes for vaccine development, the cooperative mechanism of the host response and the possibility of establishing active herd immunity. ASFV is able to infect core tissues and is associated with acute death. RNA and protein samples were obtained and verified from five tissues, including the lung, spleen, liver, kidney and lymph nodes. Multiple duplicate samples were quantitatively analyzed by corresponding transcriptomic and proteomic comparison. The results showed that different tissues cooperated in responses to ASFV infection and coordinated the defence against ASFV in the form of an inflammatory cytokine storm and interferon activation. The lung and spleen were mainly involved (dominant) in the innate immune response pathway; the liver and kidney were involved in the metabolic regulatory pathway and the inflammatory response; and the lymph nodes cooperated with the liver to complete energy metabolism regulation. The key pathways and responsive genes in each tissue of the contracted pigs were comprehensively mapped by infectomics, providing further evidence to investigate the complicated tie between ASFV and host cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the family Circoviridae are nonenveloped, icosahedral viruses with diameters of 16-26 nm and a small, circular, single-stranded DNA genome (the smallest known autonomously replicating viral genome) (1). The [...]

Canine distemper is a highly contagious infectious disease of canine and feline species caused by canine distemper virus (CDV), a member of family Paramyxoviridae (1). Susceptible animals include dogs, wolves, [...]