Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) is a viral haemorrhagic fever, transmitted to humans and other hosts by a tick vector of genus
Haemaphysalis
. It affects 400–500 people annually in the Western Ghats ...region of India through spring to summer season. To understand the species composition, distribution, and abundance of
Haemaphysalis
ticks in endemic taluks (sub-districts) of India, a surveillance for ticks was conducted between October 2017 and January 2018. In total 105 sites were selected based on grid sampling from five taluks representing five KFD endemic states in south India. A sum of 8373 ticks were collected by using standard flagging method. The study showed a wide distribution of host seeking tick species among the selected taluks, wherein
Haemaphysalis spinigera
was predominant in 3/5 taluks,
Haemaphysalis bispinosa
in 1/5 taluks, and both the species in 1/5 taluks. Further, the
H. spinigera
abundance was categorised and compared with the incidence of human cases during the same season. The grids with very high and high
H. spinigera
abundance had 70% of the 205 human cases reported. This method of tick surveillance could be efficiently used as a standard model for KFD transmission risk assessment and prediction of impending outbreaks.
•Temporal analysis of the daily viral load and cytokine levels in hospitalized dengue patients identified the pattern of cytokine dynamics.•Elevated IL-8, IL-10, IL-6, GM-CSF, MCP-1, IL-13, and IL-4 ...and decreased IL-12, MIP-1β on the third day after symptom onset is predictive of severe dengue.•The imbalanced cytokine signature may inform clinical decision-making in treating severe dengue infections.
The immunopathogenesis of dengue severity is convoluted. The primary objective of the research was to examine the dynamics of cytokine storm and its correlation with disease development in individuals affected by DENV infection. Additionally, the study aimed to discover potential biomarkers that could indicate severe dengue infection and determine the most suitable timeframe for predicting the severity of these biomarkers during the acute stage of dengue infections. We conducted a temporal analysis of the daily viral load and cytokine levels in 60 hospitalized dengue patients until discharge. Our findings reveal a distinct cytokine profile (elevated IL-8, IL-10, IL-6, GM-CSF, MCP-1, IL-13, and IL-4 and decreased IL-12, MIP-1β) on the third day after symptom onset is predictive of severe dengue in secondary dengue infection. The imbalanced cytokine signature may inform clinical decision-making in treating severe dengue infections.
We consider the 3-dimensional space with
t
1
=
constant
in a super dense star which is spheroidal. We report a class of static spherically symmetric physically viable models based on a particular ...actual solution of Einsteins field equations. The models of the class admit densities of the order of
2
×
10
14
gm
cm
−
3
, radii of the order of a few kilometers and maximum masses up to about three times the solar mass.
Chikungunya fever (CHIKF) is an arbovirus disease caused by chikungunya virus (CHIKV), an alphavirus of Togaviridae family. Transmission follows a human-mosquito-human cycle starting with a mosquito ...bite. Subsequently, symptoms develop after 2–6 days of incubation, including high fever and severe arthralgia. The disease is self-limiting and usually resolve within 2 weeks. However, chronic disease can last up to several years with persistent polyarthralgia. Overlapping symptoms and common vector with dengue and malaria present many challenges for diagnosis and treatment of this disease. CHIKF was reported in India in 1963 for the first time. After a period of quiescence lasting up to 32 years, CHIKV re-emerged in India in 2005. Currently, every part of the country has become endemic for the disease with outbreaks resulting in huge economic and productivity losses. Several mutations have been identified in circulating strains of the virus resulting in better adaptations or increased fitness in the vector(s), effective transmission, and disease severity. CHIKV evolution has been a significant driver of epidemics in India, hence, the need to focus on proper surveillance, and implementation of prevention and control measure in the country. Presently, there are no licensed vaccines or antivirals available; however, India has initiated several efforts in this direction including traditional medicines. In this review, we present the current status of CHIKF in India.
The COVID-19 pandemic and public health response to the pandemic has caused huge setbacks in the management of other infectious diseases. In the present study, we aimed to (i) assess the trends in ...numbers of samples from patients with influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory syndrome tested for influenza and the number and proportion of cases detected from 2015−2021 and (ii) examine if there were changes during the COVID-19 period (2020−2021) compared to the pre-COVID-19 period (2015−2019) in three states of India. The median (IQR) number of samples tested per month during the pre-COVID-19 period was 653 (395−1245), compared to 27 (11−98) during the COVID-19 period (p value < 0.001). The median (IQR) number of influenza cases detected per month during the pre-COVID-19 period was 190 (113−372), compared to 29 (27−30) during the COVID-19 period (p value < 0.001). Interrupted time series analysis (adjusting for seasonality and testing charges) confirmed a significant reduction in the total number of samples tested and influenza cases detected during the COVID-19 period. However, there was no change in the influenza positivity rate between pre-COVID-19 (29%) and COVID-19 (30%) period. These findings suggest that COVID-19-related disruptions, poor health-seeking behavior, and overburdened health systems might have led to a reduction in reported influenza cases rather than a true reduction in disease transmission.
The spotted fever group (SFG) of
Rickettsia
are zoonotic disease-causing pathogens, commonly transmitted by hard ticks to a wide range of hosts, including humans.
Rickettsia conorii
is the common SFG ...recognised in India, whereas most of the infections due to other group species go undifferentiated at the species level. Hence, this study was conducted to screen host-seeking ticks in the Western Ghats region, India, for the DNA of SFG
Rickettsia.
The ticks were collected from Kerala, Goa, and Maharashtra states of India during a survey conducted between November 2017 and January 2018. In total, 288 tick pools were screened for
Rickettsia
spp. DNA using pan-
Rickettsia
real-time PCR, and conventional PCR targeting the
glt
A,
Omp
A and 17-kDa protein-coding genes. Nucleotide sequences were subjected to phylogenetic analysis using the NCBI BLAST tool to identify submitted sequences with higher homology. Neighbour-joining trees were constructed using the reference sequences of the GenBank database. Overall,
Rickettsia
spp. DNA was detected in 27.2% (62/228 pools) of host-seeking ticks across the Western Ghats region, with an estimated minimum infection rate of 0.057. Upon phylogenetic analysis, it was identified that the detected sequences were highly similar (> 99% sequence homology) to
R. africae
,
Candidatus
R. laoensis and an un-categorised
Rickettsia
species, and they were widely carried by
Haemaphysalis
ticks. The current study is the first report of
R. africae
and
Candidatus
R. laoensis in ticks in India. Although the pathogenicity of these species is not well documented, they may pose a potential threat to both animal and the human population in this geographical region.
Indian Car Number Plate Recognition using Deep Learning Naren Babu, R; Sowmya, V; Soman, K P
2019 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Instrumentation and Control Technologies (ICICICT),
2019-July, Letnik:
1
Conference Proceeding
Recognition of cars is very important for the control and surveillance systems. Automobiles can be recognized by number plates, which contains a unique combination of alphabets and numbers. However, ...it's a hard and intensive job for humans to manually recognize all the parked or passing car number plates. In this paper, we approach a training-based pathway for vehicle number plate recognition. Most of the previous works in automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems have limitations in their working conditions, like for example restricting them to stationary backgrounds, indoor area, restricted vehicle speeds, prescribed driveways, fixed illumination, or match the predefined distance between camera and vehicle. The main objective of our work is to create a robust number plate recognition model that works under different illuminations and angles. We created our recognition model by training on our manually collected car number plate dataset using YOLO V3. The algorithm has been tested over 640 images which are of different colours, and illuminations.
Chikungunya disease (CHIKD) is a threat to global health, as it impairs the quality of life of an infected individual ranging from months to years. A systematic evaluation of the serological, ...virological, and immunological aspects of the circulating viruses and their impact on the host response is imperative for better understanding of the evolving disease dynamics.
Serum samples were collected from 196 acute CHIKD patients from ten tertiary care hospitals across India during 2016–2021. Out of 196 patients, paired convalescent samples were collected from 51 patients (one-month post-onset of symptoms). The serum samples were profiled for cytokines and neutralisation capacity. Further, chikungunya virus (CHIKV) was isolated from the acute sera and the replication kinetics of the clinical isolates was evaluated.
Serological analysis indicated that neutralisation could be correlated to seroconversion in the convalescent phase but not found significant in acute phase. In the acute phase samples, there was a correlation between elevated serum levels of IFN-γ, IP-10, MCP-1 and MIG and disease severity. During convalescent phase, pro-inflammatory markers such as IL-6, IL-1β, IL-9 and IP-10 were found to be elevated with a corresponding decline in the secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-4 and IL-10, which correlated with persistent arthralgia. Analysis of replication of the clinical isolates revealed that 68.4% of viruses were fast-growing in the Vero cells (cytopathic effect CPE observed within 24 h post-infection), and their corresponding acute serum samples showed an elevated secretion of IFN-α, IL-1RA, IL-17F, IL-9, MCP-1 and MIP-1α.
This study provides an important overview of neutralisation capabilities and cytokine responses along with virus pathogenesis associated with CHIKV infections in India.
Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).
The COVID-19 pandemic and public health response to the pandemic has caused huge setbacks in the management of other infectious diseases. In the present study, we aimed to (i) assess the trends in ...numbers of samples from patients with influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory syndrome tested for influenza and the number and proportion of cases detected from 2015-2021 and (ii) examine if there were changes during the COVID-19 period (2020-2021) compared to the pre-COVID-19 period (2015-2019) in three states of India. The median (IQR) number of samples tested per month during the pre-COVID-19 period was 653 (395-1245), compared to 27 (11-98) during the COVID-19 period (p value < 0.001). The median (IQR) number of influenza cases detected per month during the pre-COVID-19 period was 190 (113-372), compared to 29 (27-30) during the COVID-19 period (p value < 0.001). Interrupted time series analysis (adjusting for seasonality and testing charges) confirmed a significant reduction in the total number of samples tested and influenza cases detected during the COVID-19 period. However, there was no change in the influenza positivity rate between pre-COVID-19 (29%) and COVID-19 (30%) period. These findings suggest that COVID-19-related disruptions, poor health-seeking behavior, and overburdened health systems might have led to a reduction in reported influenza cases rather than a true reduction in disease transmission.
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