Hepatitis E virus in the Kathmandu Valley: Insights from a representative longitudinal serosurvey.

Background: Hepatitis-E virus (HEV), an etiologic agent of acute inflammatory liver disease, is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in South Asia. HEV is considered endemic in Nepal; but data on population-level infection transmission is sparse.

Methods: We conducted a longitudinal serosurvey in central Nepal to assess HEV exposure.

The Association Between Active Membership in Voluntary Organizations and Homonegativity.

Objectives:  Homonegativity adversely affects the health and well-being of homosexuals in society, making it vital to identify factors associated with it. This study investigates whether active membership in voluntary organizations correlates with homonegativity, examining how this varies by gender and age.

Methods:  Using the World Values Survey data (2017-2022) from 87,777 participants in 63 countries, we performed binary logistic regression to assess relationships between homonegativity and factors including socioeconomic status, demographics, and voluntary activity participation.

Environmental sampling for typhoidal Salmonellas in household and surface waters in Nepal identifies potential transmission pathways.

Introduction: Salmonella Typhi and Salmonella Paratyphi, fecal-oral transmitted bacterium, have temporally and geographically heterogeneous pathways of transmission. Previous work in Kathmandu, Nepal implicated stone waterspouts as a dominant transmission pathway after 77% of samples tested positive for Salmonella Typhi and 70% for Salmonella Paratyphi. Due to a falling water table, these spouts no longer provide drinking water, but typhoid fever persists, and the question of the disease's dominant pathway of transmission remains unanswered.

Estimating seroconversion rates accounting for repeated infections by approximate Bayesian computation.

This study presents a novel approach for inferring the incidence of infections by employing a quantitative model of the serum antibody response. Current methodologies often overlook the cumulative effect of an individual's infection history, making it challenging to obtain a marginal distribution for antibody concentrations. Our proposed approach leverages approximate Bayesian computation to simulate cross-sectional antibody responses and compare these to observed data, factoring in the impact of repeated infections.

Cost-effectiveness of tenofovir prophylaxis during pregnancy for the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of the hepatitis B virus: real-world analysis from Thailand.

Objective: Despite implementing hepatitis B immunoglobulin (HBIG) and vaccination, data suggest it would not be sufficient to reach the elimination targets. Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) has been added to the Thai national standards of care for prevention of transmission of the hepatitis B virus during birth. To optimise national strategies in Thailand, we assessed TDF's effectiveness for prevention of mother-to-child transmission and conducted cost-effectiveness analyses of different TDF-based strategies.

Selecting participants fairly for controlled human infection studies.

Controlled human infection (CHI) studies involve the deliberate exposure of healthy research participants to infectious agents to study early disease processes and evaluate interventions under controlled conditions with high efficiency. Although CHI studies expose participants to the risk of infection, they are designed to offer investigators unique advantages for studying the pathogenesis of infectious diseases and testing potential vaccines or treatments in humans. One of the central challenges facing investigators involves the fair selection of research subjects to participate in CHI studies.

The fibrinogen-like domain of FREP1 protein is a broad-spectrum malaria transmission-blocking vaccine antigen.

FREP1 in mosquito midguts facilitates parasite transmission. The fibrinogen-like (FBG) domain of FREP1 is highly conserved (>90% identical) among species from different continents, suggesting that anti-FBG antibodies may block malaria transmission to all anopheline mosquitoes. Using standard membrane-feeding assays, anti-FREP1 polyclonal antibodies significantly blocked transmission of and to and , respectively.