Effect of RTS,S/AS01 vaccine booster dose on cellular immune responses in African infants and children.

RTS,S/AS01, the first approved malaria vaccine, demonstrated moderate efficacy during the phase 3 pediatric trial. We previously investigated cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses following the primary 3-dose immunization and now report responses to the booster dose given 18 months later. Thirty CMI markers were measured by Luminex in supernatants of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 709 children and infants after RTS,S/AS01 antigen stimulation, and their associations with malaria risk and antibodies one month post-booster and one year later were assessed.

Travel to malaria-endemic areas: using digital geo-location to assess potential exposure risks and health behaviours.

Background: Travellers frequently visit popular destinations like Brazil, India, Peru, Thailand, and Tanzania, each presenting varying malaria risks. The extent to which travellers enter high-risk malaria-endemic areas in destinations with heterogeneous malaria risk remains unclear. We used geo-location via smartphone application to (i) describe where travellers go within countries with heterogeneous malaria risk (Brazil, India, Peru, Thailand), and (ii) compare mosquito bite prevention behaviours between these destinations and Tanzania, considered entirely high-risk for malaria.

Excess mortality during COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh - evidence from a rural survey.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had a profound impact worldwide. In Bangladesh, the official number of deaths for COVID-19 was around 29 000. However, many countries including Bangladesh experienced substantial underreporting of COVID-19 deaths due to lack of complete national civil registration system.

Single- and two-pollutant concentration-response functions for PM and NO for quantifying mortality burden in health impact assessments.

Objective: Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) for air pollutant mixtures are challenging because risk estimates are primarily derived from single-pollutant models. Combining risk estimates from multiple pollutants requires new approaches, as a simple addition of single pollutant risk estimates from correlated air pollutants may result in double counting. We investigated approaches applying concentration-response functions (CRFs) from single- and two-pollutant models in HIAs, focusing on long-term exposure to particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.

The histone methyltransferase PfSET10 is dispensable for the regulation of antigenic variation and gene expression in blood-stage parasites.

The malaria parasite employs antigenic variation of the virulence factor erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) to escape adaptive immune responses during blood infection. Antigenic variation of PfEMP1 occurs through epigenetic switches in the mutually exclusive expression of individual members of the multi-copy gene family. genes are located in perinuclear clusters of transcriptionally inactive heterochromatin.

anti-schistosomal activity of the methanol extracts from and .

Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by the flat worms under the genus . The disease is prominent in tropical and sub tropical countries and it is manifested in two forms; the acute and the chronic form. Treatment and control of the schistosomiasis is constrained with various factors including immerging worm resistance and selective efficacy of the current recommended drug of choice.

Patient's willingness to pay for improved community health insurance in Tanzania.

Globally, achieving universal health coverage remains significant challenge. Health insurance coverage in low- and middle-income countries is still low with only a few African countries managed to reach 50% coverage. This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing patients' willingness to pay (WTP) for medication and various versions of the improved Community Health Insurance Fund (iCHF) in Tanzania.

Risk, Attributable Fraction and Attributable Number of Cause-Specific Heat-Related Emergency Hospital Admissions in Switzerland.

Objectives: We assessed the relationship between heat and emergency hospital admissions (EHAs) in Switzerland using clinically relevant metrics.

Methods: Applying distributed lag non-linear models, we investigated temperature-admission associations between May and September 1998-2019 for various disease groups, by age class and gender. We estimated the relative risk (RR) for moderate (29°C) and extreme (34°C) daily maximum temperatures relative to disease-specific optimum temperature, and calculated attributable fractions (AFs) for hot days and the following week.

Empowering rural communities for effective larval source management: A small-scale field evaluation of a community-led larviciding approach to control malaria in south-eastern Tanzania.

Introduction: Larval source management, particularly larviciding, is mainly implemented in urban settings to control malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. In Tanzania, the government has recently expanded larviciding to rural settings across the country, but implementation faces multiple challenges, notably inadequate resources and limited know-how by technical staff. This study evaluated the potential of training community members to identify, characterize and target larval habitats of mosquitoes, the dominant vector of malaria transmission in south-eastern Tanzania.

World Health Organization repository of systematic reviews on interventions in environment, climate change and health: a new resource for decision makers, intervention implementers, and researchers.

To facilitate the use of the mounting evidence on how human health is inextricably linked to the health of the planet and the urgent need for measures against the escalating triple planetary crisis, the WHO has developed a repository of systematic reviews on interventions in the area of environment, climate change and health (ECH). This commentary introduces the repository, describes its rationale and development, and points to potential future evolutions. The repository aims to provide a user-friendly tool for quickly finding systematic reviews and meta-analyses on specific ECH topics.

In the arm-in-cage test, topical repellents activate mosquitoes to disengage upon contact instead of repelling them at distance.

Topical repellents provide protection against mosquito bites and their efficacy is often assessed using the arm-in-cage test. The arm-in-cage test estimates the repellent's protection time by exposing a repellent-treated forearm to host-seeking mosquitoes inside a cage at regular intervals until the first confirmed mosquito bite. However, the test does not reveal the repellents' behavioural mode of action.

Genotyping methods to distinguish Plasmodium falciparum recrudescence from new infection for the assessment of antimalarial drug efficacy: an observational, single-centre, comparison study.

Background: Distinguishing Plasmodium falciparum recrudescence from new infections is crucial for the assessment of antimalarial drug efficacy against P falciparum. We aimed to compare the efficacy of different genotyping methods to assess their effect on drug efficacy estimates, particularly in patients from high-transmission settings with polyclonal infections.

Methods: In this head-to-head comparison study, we compared five different genotyping methods currently used: fast capillary electrophoresis (F-CE) using msp1, msp2, and glurp; high-resolution capillary electrophoresis (H-CE) using msp1, msp2, and glurp; H-CE using microsatellites; targeted amplicon deep sequencing (TADS) using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-rich markers; and high-resolution melting (HRM) analysis using msp1 and msp2.

Does growing up in a physical activity-friendly neighborhood increase the likelihood of remaining active during adolescence and early adulthood?

Background: The SOPHYA-cohort-study investigated whether the objectively characterized and perceived residential neighborhood of Swiss youth predict accelerometer-measured physical activity and activity in specific domains (participation in a sports club and cycling) five years later.

Methods: At baseline in 2014, 1230 children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 years participated and wore accelerometers for 7 days. Of these children, 447 participated again in the follow-up study in 2019 and provided longitudinal accelerometer measurements.

Single-Dose Drug Development Candidate for Schistosomiasis.

Aryl hydantoins were identified in the early 1980s as a promising antischistosomal chemotype. However, as exemplified by Ro 13-3978, this compound series produced antiandrogenic side effects on the host, a not unexpected outcome given their structural similarity to the antiandrogenic drug nilutamide. The two key advances in our optimization of Ro 13-3978 were swapping the aryl trifluoromethyl substituent with a difluoroethyl to abolish antiandrogenic effects and replacing the hydrogen atoms of the -dimethyl substructure with deuterium atoms to increase metabolic stability.

Soliciting Diaries for "Real-Time" Insights Into the COVID-19 Pandemic: Methodological Reflections on Using Digital Technologies to Engage the Public.

Objectives: To discuss the opportunities and challenges of the qualitative solicited diary approach using digital technologies as an innovative way to access insights into people's lives and their unique stories in times of COVID-19-related social distancing in Switzerland.

Methods: This case study provides reflective arguments from a social science perspective for the selection of different (digital) diary designs to optimize data collection in the SNSF-funded project "PubliCo - an experimental online platform for COVID-19-related public perception."

Results: The findings highlight some opportunities of using (digital) diaries, such as empowering participants, gathering real-time data, and ethical and methodological challenges when it comes to gaining access to alternative narratives.

The non-inferiority of piperonyl-butoxide Yorkool G3 insecticide-treated nets compared to Olyset®Plus measured by Anopheles arabiensis mortality in experimental huts in Tanzania.

Background: Non-inferiority trials are recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to demonstrate that health products show comparable efficacy to that of existing standard of care. As part of the WHO Global Malaria Programme (GMP) process of assessment of malaria vector control products, a second-in-class insecticide-treated net (ITN) must be shown to be non-inferior to a first-in-class product based on mosquito mortality. The public health impact of the first-in-class pyrethroid-piperonyl butoxide (PBO) ITN, Olyset Plus, has been demonstrated in epidemiological trials in areas with insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, but there is a need to determine the efficacy of other pyrethroid-PBO nets to ensure timely market availability of nets in order to increase access to ITNs.

Innovative COVID-19 Point-of-Care Diagnostics Suitable for Tuberculosis Diagnosis: A Scoping Review.

Rapid and accurate point-of-care (POC) tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics are crucial to bridge the TB diagnostic gap. Leveraging recent advancements in COVID-19 diagnostics, we explored adapting commercially available POC SARS-CoV-2 tests for TB diagnosis in line with the World Health Organization (WHO) target product profiles (TPPs). A scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR guidelines to systematically map POC antigen and molecular SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests potentially meeting the TPPs for TB diagnostic tests for peripheral settings.

The political economy of national health insurance schemes: evidence from Zambia.

Governments in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly considering the introduction of national health insurance scheme (NHIS) as a strategy to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) targets. The literature has widely documented the technical challenges associated with implementing UHC policies in LMICs but much less is known about the political process necessary to pass UHC legislation. In this article, we document the political economy issues surrounding the establishment of the Zambia NHIS in 2018.