The dyslipidemia associated with obesity plays a major role in the development of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Dyslipidemia in childhood can progress in adult stage. APOE is one of the ...most important genes that regulate plasma lipid transport and clearance. The study aimed to assess whether the common APOE polymorphism is associated with lipid profiles and dyslipidemia, and it could be modulated by obesity-related traits (body mass index, waist circumference, hip circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio) in Vietnamese children.
A case-control study was designed including 249 cases with dyslipidemia and 600 controls without dyslipidemia. Dyslipidemia is defined as elevated total or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels, or low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Genotype for APOE polymorphism (rs7412 and rs429358) was determined by the polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism method. The association of APOE genotypes with plasma lipid disorders was tested by binary logistic regression analysis, taking into account the confounding factors of age, sex, residence, province and obesity-related traits.
In comparison with ε3/ε3 carriers, the ε4 carriers had the highest concentration of serum TC and LDL-C in cases and controls (P ≤ 0.001), while ε2 carriers had the lowest. Carriers without TT haplotype had higher serum TC than those with TT haplotype. The ε4 carriers had higher hypoalphalipoproteinemia risk than ε3/ε3 carriers (OR = 2.78, P = 0.02) before and after adjustment for age, gender, residence and obesity-related traits.
The study suggested that the APOE genotype and haplotype significantly associated with plasma TC and LDL-C level in Vietnamese children. The association of APOE genotype with hypoalphalipoproteinemia was independent of obesity-related traits.
Background
eHealth is increasingly becoming an indispensable part of health practice and policy-making strategies. However, the use of eHealth tools in clinical practice and the perceptions of ...eHealth among medical students and health care professionals in Vietnam are not well understood.
Objective
This study aims to investigate perceptions and practices regarding eHealth and their associated factors among medical students and health care professionals.
Methods
A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 523 medical students and health care professionals. Information about the practices for, perceived barriers to, and benefits of eHealth application in clinical practices was collected. Multivariate Tobit and logistic regression models were used to determine factors associated with perceptions and practices.
Results
In total, 61.6% (322/523) of participants used eHealth tools in clinical practices, with moderate levels of eHealth literacy. The score for the perceived benefits of eHealth tools was low. The most common barrier for eHealth utilization was human resources for IT (240/523, 45.9%), followed by security and risk control capacity (226/523, 43.2%) and no training in eHealth application (223/523, 42.6%). Age, eHealth literacy, and the use of the internet for updating medical knowledge were positively associated with using eHealth tools in clinical practices.
Conclusions
eHealth tools were moderately used in clinical practices, and the benefits of eHealth were underestimated among health care professionals and medical students in Vietnam. Renovating the current medical education curriculum to integrate eHealth principles should be required to equip health care professionals and medical students with essential skills for rapid digital transformation.
Due to the shared border with China, Vietnam faced risks from the COVID-19 pandemic at the early stages of the outbreak. Good hygiene practices were considered an effective prevention method, but ...there were only minimal data on the effectiveness of hygiene practices against the pandemic at the community level. Thus, this study aims to assess hygiene practices in society by using a community-based survey. A cross-sectional study using survey monkey was conducted from December 2019 to February 2020. The Snowball sampling technique was used to recruit participants and exploratory factor analysis was applied to scrutinize the construct validity of the measurement. We used the Tobit regression model to assess the association. Hygiene in a high-risk environment and hygiene in the social and educational environment were two main factors after applying the EFA method. Participants grade community sanitation quite low (around 6 out of 10). Furthermore, the mean score of hygiene practice at a local level in a high-risk environment was slightly low at 6.0. The score of sanitation in the Central region (5.3) was quite low compared to the North (5.8) and the South (6.2). The most high-risk environment was construction, industrial zone and food safety. Moreover, younger respondents were more likely to report poorer hygiene practices in high-risk environments (Coefficient = -1.67; 95% CI = -3.03; -0.32) and social and educational environment (Coefficient = -1.29; 95% CI = -2.54; -0.04). Our study gives an insight into pandemic preparedness at the grassroots level. The findings suggest the necessity of specific communication education for society to improve the compliance of hygiene practices to prevent the spreading of COVID-19.
Two new acetophenone derivatives named knepachycarpanone A (1) and knepachycarpanone B (2) together with a new cardanol derivative named knepachycarpanol C (3) were isolated from the EtOAc extract of ...Knema pachycarpa stems. Their chemical structures were established on the basis of spectral evidences. Compounds 1 and 2 exhibited moderate cytotoxicity against Hela cancer cell line with IC50 values of 26.92 ± 1.46 and 30.20 ± 1.97 μM, respectively.
The purpose of this study is to identify the health status and healthcare utilization factors associated with middle-aged women in the rapid urbanization context of Vietnam.
A cross-sectional study ...with a systematic random sampling technique was conducted in Hung Yen city. A systematic random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 362 middle-aged women. The collected data included socioeconomic characteristics, health issues, health service utilization, and social support for women in both urban and rural areas. Multivariate regression models were used to determine factors associated with health service utilization and the number of inpatient/outpatient visits.
Among 362 participants, the main chronic diseases were diabetes (12.8%), cardiovascular diseases (11.3%), and migraines (9.5%). The proportion of using inpatient and outpatient services among middle-aged women was relatively high (35.8 and 61%, respectively). Women having more support from family and friends were less likely to seek healthcare. Living in rural areas significantly increased the number of inpatient treatments. Regarding health service utilization, the percentage of people using outpatient treatment services accounted for 61.0%, while using inpatient treatment services was reported as 35.8%. The average number of outpatient and inpatient visits per participant were 1.3 and 0.9, respectively.
This study revealed a relatively high rate of using healthcare services among women at midlife in a rapidly industrializing city in Vietnam. Screening programs should be implemented for early detection and treatment of chronic diseases in middle-aged women, especially for diabetes. Communication strategies should be adapted to raise awareness of rural women about regular health checkups, and counseling services of healthcare providers should be strongly reinforced. Lifestyle interventions and health promotion programs involving social support should be implemented to improve wellbeing and healthcare-seeking behaviors among middle-aged women.
The progression into the Digital Age has brought an array of novel skill requirements. Unlike traditional literacy, there are currently few measures that can reliably measure eHealth literacy. The ...Transactional Model of eHealth Literacy and subsequent Transactional eHealth Literacy Instrument may provide a feasible option for measuring eHealth literacy.
This instrument has yet to be validated, which is the aim of this study. In particular, this article was conducted to validate the TeHLI to see which components of the tool (how many and which components included) would be the best fit statistically and whether the tool applies to groups of different characteristics.
We conducted an online cross-sectional study among 236 Vietnamese young people. A exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the best fit model of the Transactional eHealth Literacy Instrument. A confirmatory factor analysis tested measurement invariance at four levels: configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance. Only metric invariance was partially invariant, while the rest tested fully invariant. Even with partial metric invariance, there is reason to assume that functional, communicative, critical, and translational eHealth literacy (the four levels according to the transactional model) are consistently measured when deploying the Transactional eHealth Literacy Instrument across groups.
The study findings substantiate that the most optimal composition of the TeHLI consists of four factors: functional, communicative, critical, and translational eHealth literacy, with RMSEA = 0.116; CFI = 0.907, and the highest internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.91, 0.92, 0.88, and 0.92 for each factor respectively). After using measurement invariance, that gender, education, marital status, age, location, and household economy do not influence the way participants to respond to the TeHLI to the point that would introduce measurement bias. In other word, using TeHLI across population groups should not produce error margins that substantially differ from each other.
This study suggests the instrument can be used for comparisons across groups and has the potential to generate high-quality data usable for informing change agents as to whether a particular population is proficient enough to adopt novel eHealth innovations.
Obesity is one of the top global issues, which induces several serious health consequences both physically and mentally, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, dyslipidemia, eating ...disorders, depression and stress. However, the effective therapy to prevent and treat obesity and overweight, up to now, cannot be found nowadays. Several methods/medicines namely diet control, energy balance, environmental changes, genetic and stem cell therapies, new drugs/chemicals have been extensively studied to enhance the ability to control bodyweight and prevent obesity. Of all the aforementioned methods, green tea, used as a daily beverage, has shown beneficial impacts for the health, especially its anti-obesity effects. Available evidence shows that green tea can interrupt lipid emulsification, reduce adipocyte differentiation, increase thermogenesis, and reduce food intake, thus green tea improves the systemic metabolism and decreases fat mass. Here, we highlight and sum up the update investigations of anti-obesity effect of green tea as well as discuss the potential application of them for preventing obesity and its related metabolic disorders.
As 3D-printed (3DP) patterns are solid and durable, they can be used to create thin wall castings, which is complicated with wax patterns because of the wax's fragility and high shrinkage ratio. ...According to this study's experiment results, polylactic acid (PLA), polyvinyl butyral (PVB), and castable wax (CW) are suitable materials for preparing investment casting (IC) cavities. The results indicate that the casting product with the highest-quality surface is obtained using a cavity prepared using a CW-printed pattern. PLA- and PVB-printed patterns provide a good surface finish for casted products. In addition, the roughness of both the printed and casted surfaces increases as the printing layer height increases. The roughness of the casted surface varies from 2.25 μm to 29.17 μm. This investigation also considers the correlation between the infill ratio and mechanical properties of PLA-printed patterns. An increase in the infill ratios from 0% to 100% leads to a significant increase in the tensile properties of the PLA-printed pattern. The obtained results can be practically used.
The onset of COVID-19 has resulted in both morbidity and mortality. It also has a consequential impact on the Vietnamese economy. Prior studies have examined the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare ...professionals' career decisions. However, no study remains to have examined the work conditions and career choices in a general Vietnamese population. Our study aims to identify factors associated with the change in work conditions and career choices in general Vietnamese population.
An online cross-sectional study between September 2021 through to November 2021 (during the Omicron COVID-19 pandemic). Snowball sampling method was utilized in recruiting the participants. The questionnaire used in this study included the following questions: (a) Socio-demographic information; (b) impact of COVID-19 on personal habits/daily expenses; (c) Current nature of work and impact of COVID-19 on work; (d) Impact of COVID-19 on career decisions. Data analysis was performed using STATA version 16. Descriptive analysis followed by Ordered logit regression was performed, to identify potential covariates.
Six hundred and fifty participants were recruited, of which only 645 completed the survey. The completion rate was 99.2%. This study demonstrated the impact that COVID-19 has on finances, as only 32% of those sampled reported that they were able to pay in full. 46.6% of the respondents have had a decrease in their overall household income. With regards to their employment and work characteristics, 41.0% reported a decrease in their work satisfaction and 39.0% reported having reduced motivation for work. Females were less likely to consider transiting from their current job to another field than male participants. Respondents who were married, had a higher level of commitment to their current job, and lower inclination to transition to another field. Respondents experiencing financial difficulties were more likely to consider a transition to another field/work.
This is perhaps one of the first studies to have examined the impact of COVID-19 on work intentions regarding career choices and transitions in the general Vietnamese population. Future financial policies must take into consideration these factors.
PDF
