Noroviruses constitute a significant aetiology of sporadic and epidemic gastroenteritis in human hosts worldwide, especially among young children, the elderly, and immunocompromised patients. The low infectious dose of the virus, protracted shedding in faeces, and the ability to persist in the environment promote viral transmission in different socioeconomic settings. Considering the substantial disease burden across healthcare and community settings and the difficulty in controlling the disease, we review aspects related to current knowledge about norovirus biology, mechanisms driving the evolutionary trends, epidemiology and molecular diversity, pathogenic mechanism, and immunity to viral infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHerein we combine the well-known processing advantages conferred by polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) with crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA) to achieve the efficient synthesis of hydrolytically degradable, highly anisotropic block copolymer nano-objects directly in aqueous solution at 30% w/w solids. This new strategy involves a so-called reverse sequence PISA protocol that employs poly(l-lactide) (PLLA) as the crystallizable core-forming block and poly(-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMAC) as the water-soluble non-ionic coronal block. Such syntheses result in PDMAC-rich anisotropic nanoparticles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A complete blood count (CBC) analysis is one of the most common conventional blood tests that physicians frequently prescribe.
The Objective: of this study was to determine the reference intervals (RIs) of CBC parameters in the population of healthy adults living in the western Sudan region.
Methods: A cross-sectional study of healthy people residing in the western area of Sudan was carried out.
Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) aqueous emulsion polymerization is used to prepare well-defined ABCB tetrablock copolymer nanoparticles via sequential monomer addition at 30 °C. The A block comprises water-soluble poly(2-(-acryloyloxy)ethyl pyrrolidone) (PNAEP), while the B and C blocks comprise poly(-butyl acrylate) (PtBA) and poly(-butyl acrylate) (PnBA), respectively. High conversions are achieved at each stage, and the final sterically stabilized spherical nanoparticles can be obtained at 20% w/w solids at pH 3 and at up to 40% w/w solids at pH 7.
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