High Risc Infectious Disease

OBJECTIVE: Assess characteristics of clinical pneumonia after introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), by HIV exposure status, in children hospitalised in a governmental hospital in Malawi. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We evaluated 1139 children ≤5 years old hospitalised with clinical pneumonia: 101 HIV-exposed, uninfected (HEU) and 1038 HIV-unexposed, uninfected (HUU). Median age was 11 months (IQR 6-20), 59% were male, median mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) was 14 cm (IQR 13-15) and mean weight-for-height z score was -0...

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a serious infectious disease in the swine industry, which causes severe economic losses to current swine production worldwide. There are no effective antiviral strategies for preventing this disease. Previous studies showed that microRNAs (miRNAs) play important role in virus-host interactions. In this study, we demonstrated that the expression level of ssc-miR-124a was significantly downregulated during both high and low pathogenic PRRSV infection. Overexpression of ssc-miR-124a markedly inhibits PRRSV replication in PAMs...

OBJECTIVE: An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a public health emergency of international concern and poses a big challenge to medical staff and general public. The aim is to investigate psychological impact of COVID-19 epidemic on medical staff in different working posts in China, and to explore the correlation between psychological disorder and the exposure to COVID-19. METHODS: A multicenter WeChat-based online survey was conducted among medical staff in China between 26 February and 3 March 2020...

Introduction of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) into some cells or organisms results in degradation of its homologous mRNA, a process called RNA interference (RNAi). The dsRNAs are processed into short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that subsequently bind to the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), causing degradation of target mRNAs. Because of this sequence-specific ability to silence target genes, RNAi has been extensively used to study gene functions and has the potential to control disease pathogens or vectors...