The World Health Organization has set ambitious targets for the global elimination of tuberculosis. However, these targets will not be achieved at the current rate of progress.
We performed a ...cluster-randomized, controlled trial in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam, to evaluate the effectiveness of active community-wide screening, as compared with standard passive case detection alone, for reducing the prevalence of tuberculosis. Persons 15 years of age or older who resided in 60 intervention clusters (subcommunes) were screened for pulmonary tuberculosis, regardless of symptoms, annually for 3 years, beginning in 2014, by means of rapid nucleic acid amplification testing of spontaneously expectorated sputum samples. Active screening was not performed in the 60 control clusters in the first 3 years. The primary outcome, measured in the fourth year, was the prevalence of microbiologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis among persons 15 years of age or older. The secondary outcome was the prevalence of tuberculosis infection, as assessed by an interferon gamma release assay in the fourth year, among children born in 2012.
In the fourth-year prevalence survey, we tested 42,150 participants in the intervention group and 41,680 participants in the control group. A total of 53 participants in the intervention group (126 per 100,000 population) and 94 participants in the control group (226 per 100,000) had pulmonary tuberculosis, as confirmed by a positive nucleic acid amplification test for
(prevalence ratio, 0.56; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.40 to 0.78; P<0.001). The prevalence of tuberculosis infection in children born in 2012 was 3.3% in the intervention group and 2.6% in the control group (prevalence ratio, 1.29; 95% CI, 0.70 to 2.36; P = 0.42).
Three years of community-wide screening in persons 15 years of age or older who resided in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam, resulted in a lower prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis in the fourth year than standard passive case detection alone. (Funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council; ACT3 Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry number, ACTRN12614000372684.).
Floating treatment wetlands (FTW) are nature-based solutions for the purification of open water systems such as rivers, ponds, and lakes polluted by diffuse sources as untreated or partially treated ...domestic wastewater and agricultural run-off. Compared with other physicochemical and biological technologies, FTW is a technology with low-cost, simple configuration, easy to operate; has a relatively high efficiency, and is energy-saving, and aesthetic. Water remediation in FTWs is supported by plant uptake and the growth of a biofilm on the water plant roots, so the selection of the macrophyte species is critical, not only to pollutant removal but also to the local ecosystem integrity, especially for full-scale implementation. The key factors such as buoyant frame/raft, plant growth support media, water depth, seasonal variation, and temperature have a considerable role in the design, operation, maintenance, and pollutant treatment performance of FTW. Harvesting is a necessary process to maintain efficient operation by limiting the re-pollution of plants in the decay phase. Furthermore, the harvested plant biomass can serve as a green source for the recovery of energy and value-added products.
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•Design, operation and maintenance of floating treatment wetland (FTW) were examined.•Removal mechanisms of FTW are plant uptake and degradation by biofilm.•Benefits, limitations, and solutions for improvement of FTW were also discussed.•Plant biomass harvesting from FTW has been used for value-added products.
Influenza A (H5N1) virus with an amino acid substitution in neuraminidase conferring high-level resistance to oseltamivir was isolated from two of eight Vietnamese patients during oseltamivir ...treatment. Both patients died of influenza A (H5N1) virus infection, despite early initiation of treatment in one patient. Surviving patients had rapid declines in the viral load to undetectable levels during treatment. These observations suggest that resistance can emerge during the currently recommended regimen of oseltamivir therapy and may be associated with clinical deterioration and that the strategy for the treatment of influenza A (H5N1) virus infection should include additional antiviral agents.
Foreign body-related complications are rare but possibly fatal events in clinical practice. Liver abscess as a result of gastrointestinal perforation caused by foreign bodies is even more rare. We ...report a case of a 63-year-old man who was admitted with fever and left epigastric pain. Further investigation revealed a liver abscess without resolution despite antibiotic therapy for several weeks. In the second admission, an enhanced computerized tomography scan revealed multiple abscesses in the left lobe of the liver, with a linear radio-dense foreign body within the collection. Open surgery was performed to extract the foreign body. The patient made a satisfactory postoperative recovery without complications and was discharged on the sixth postoperative day.
Among various advanced oxidation processes applied in wastewater treatment, photocatalysis has attracted attention in research and industry due to its advantages, such as low cost, high efficiency, ...and eco-friendliness. With a unique layered structure, bismuth oxyhalides have been widely applied as high-efficiency photocatalysts for organic pollutant degradation in the aqueous environment. However, the large bandgap of BiOCl and the high recombination rate of BiOBr limit their practical application. Tuning bandgap by forming a solid solution is an efficient method to engineer bandgap and prolong the lifetime of photo-induced electron-hole pairs. In this study, a facile solid-state reaction in a vapor chamber was applied to prepared solid solutions of BiOCl1−xBrx. Their photocatalytic performance is significantly improved in comparison with the end components. The optimal composition at x = 0.5 performed degradation efficiencies of 92.3% and 82.6% for rhodamine B and tetracycline degradation, after 70 mins of reaction under light emitting diode (LED) irradiation, respectively. This improvement is attributed to the reduction in bandgap and the effective charge recombination due to the favorable electronic and crystal structure variation, demonstrated by the photoelectrochemical results and density functional theory calculation.
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•Novel solid-state reaction in the vapor chamber of BiOCl1−xBrx solid solution.•Crystal and electronic structure variation by solid solution formation.•Significant improvement in visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity.•DFT study on oxygen vacancy formation and charge re-distribution.
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