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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the ten major threats to global health. Advances in technology, including whole-genome sequencing, have provided new insights into the origin and mechanisms of AMR. However, our understanding of the short-term impact of antimicrobial pressure and resistance on the physiology of bacterial populations is limited. We aimed to investigate morphological and physiological responses of clinical isolates of E. coli under short-term exposure to key antimicrobials. We performed whole-genome sequencing on twenty-seven E. coli isolates isolated from children with sepsis to evaluate their AMR gene content. We assessed their antimicrobial susceptibility profile and measured their growth dynamics and morphological characteristics under exposure to varying concentrations of ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone, tetracycline, gentamicin, and azithromycin. AMR was common, with all organisms resistant to at least one antimicrobial; a total of 81.5% were multi-drug-resistant (MDR). We observed an association between resistance profile and morphological characteristics of the E. coli over a three-hour exposure to antimicrobials. Growth dynamics experiments demonstrated that resistance to tetracycline promoted the growth of E. coli under antimicrobial-free conditions, while resistance to the other antimicrobials incurred a fitness cost. Notably, antimicrobial exposure heterogeneously suppressed bacterial growth, but sub-MIC concentrations of azithromycin increased the maximum growth rate of the clinical isolates. Our results outline complex interactions between organism and antimicrobials and raise clinical concerns regarding exposure of sub-MIC concentrations of specific antimicrobials.

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This study investigates the prevalence of tobacco and alcohol uses and associated factors among 12 ethnic minorities in Vietnam in 2019. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 5172 people aged ≥15 years. The prevalence of smoking and drinking was 19.7% and 29.9%, respectively, and significantly higher among men than women. These numbers were heterogeneous across ethnic minorities. Smoking prevalence was high among Ba Na (25.9%), Cham An Giang (22.3%), Khmer (23.5%), La Hu (26.3%), Ta Oi (30.7%), and Bru Van Kieu (29.6%) ethnicities whereas that of Gie Trieng and Mnong ethnicities was low (3.7% and 9.5%, respectively). Drinking prevalence ranged from 1.4% in Cham An Giang ethnicity to 68.6% in Ba Na ethnicity. A wide ethnic disparity on tobacco and alcohol use could be explained by the ethnic variation of lifestyles, social norms, and cultural features. Our findings suggest the need to develop ethnic-specific interventions to mitigate the smoking and drinking prevalence.

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There is an exigency of adopting machine learning techniques to screen and discover new materials which could address many societal and technological challenges. In this work, we follow this trend and employ machine learning to study (high-order) electric properties of organic compounds. The results of quantum-chemistry calculations of polarizability and first hyperpolarizability, obtained for more than 50,000 compounds, served as targets for machine learning-based predictions. The studied set of molecular structures encompasses organic push-pull molecules with variable linker lengths. Moreover, the diversified set of linkers, composed of alternating single/double and single/triple carbon-carbon bonds, was considered. This study demonstrates that the applied machine learning strategy allows us to obtain the correlation coefficients, between predicted and reference values of (hyper)polarizabilities, exceeding 0.9 on training, validation, and test set. However, in order to achieve such satisfactory predictive power, one needs to choose the training set appropriately, as the machine learning methods are very sensitive to the linker-type diversity in the training set, yielding catastrophic predictions in certain cases. Furthermore, the dependence of (hyper)polarizability on the length of spacers was studied in detail, allowing for explanation of the appreciably high accuracy of employed approaches.

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BACKGROUND: Since the recombinant protein was discovered, it has become more popular in many aspects of life science. The value of global pharmaceutical market was $87 billion in 2008 and the sales for industrial enzyme exceeded $4 billion in 2012. This is strong evidence showing the great potential of recombinant protein. However, native genes introduced into a host can cause incompatibility of codon usage bias, GC content, repeat region, Shine-Dalgarno sequence with host's expression system, so the yields can fall down significantly. Hence, we propose novel methods for gene optimization based on neural network, Bayesian theory, and Euclidian distance. RESULT: The correlation coefficients of our neural network are 0.86, 0.73, and 0.90 in training, validation, and testing process. In addition, genes optimized by our methods seem to associate with highly expressed genes and give reasonable codon adaptation index values. Furthermore, genes optimized by the proposed methods are highly matched with the previous experimental data. CONCLUSION: The proposed methods have high potential for gene optimization and further researches in gene expression. We built a demonstrative program using Matlab R2014a under Mac OS X. The program was published in both standalone executable program and Matlab function files. The developed program can be accessed from http://www.math.hcmus.edu.vn/~ptbao/paper_soft/GeneOptProg/ .

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Vietnam is undergoing a rapid social and economic developments resulting in speedy urbanization, changes in methods for animal production, food marketing systems, and food consumption habits. These changes will have major impacts on human exposures to food poisoning. The present case study aimed to estimate hospitalization costs of foodborne diarrhea cases in selected health facilities in Vietnam. This is a facility-based cost-of-illness study conducted in seven health facilities in Northern Vietnam. All suspect cases of foodborne diarrhea, as diagnosed by doctors, who admitted to the studied health facilities during June-August, 2013 were selected. Costs associated with hospitalization for foodborne diseases were estimated from societal perspective using retrospective approach. We included direct and indirect costs of hospitalization of foodborne diarrhea cases. During the study period, 87 foodborne diarrhea cases were included. On average, the costs per treatment episode and per hospitalization day for foodborne diarrhea case were US$ 106.9 and US$ 33.6 respectively. Indirect cost (costs of times to patient, their relatives due to the patient's illness) made up the largest share (51.3%). Direct medical costs accounted for 33.8%; direct non-medical costs (patient and their relatives) represented 14.9%. Cost levels and compositions varied by level of health facilities. More attentions should be paid on prevention, control of foodborne diarrhea cases in Vietnam. Ensuring safety of food depends on efforts of everyone involved in food chain continuum, from production, processing, and transport to consumption.

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Health financing has been considered as an important building block of a health system and has a key role in promoting universal health coverage in the Vietnam. This paper aims to describe the pattern of health expenditure, including total health expenditure and composition of health expenditure, over the last two decades in Vietnam. The paper mainly uses the data from Vietnam National Health Account and Vietnam Living Standards Survey. We also included data from other relevant published literature, reports and statistics about health care expenditure in Vietnam. The per capita health expenditure in Vietnam increased from US$ 14 in 1995 to US$ 86 in 2012. The total health expenditure as a share of GDP also rose from 5.2% in 1995 to 6.9% in 2012. Public health expenditure as percentage of government expenditure rose from 7.4% in 1995 to nearly 10% in 2012. The coverage of health insurance went up from 10% in 1995 to 68.5% in 2012. However, health financing in Vietnam was depending on private expenditures (57.4% in 2012). As a result, the proportion of households with catastrophic expenditure in 2012 was 4.2%. The rate of impoverishment in 2012 was 2.5%. To ensure equity and efficient goal of health system, policy actions for containing the health care out-of-pocket payments and their poverty impacts are urgently needed in Vietnam.

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BACKGROUND: As a tropical depression in the East Sea, Vietnam is greatly affected by climate change and natural disasters. Knowledge of the current capacity of the primary healthcare system in Vietnam to respond to health issues associated with storms and floods is very important for policy making in the country. However, there has been little scientific research in this area. OBJECTIVE: This research was to assess primary healthcare system capacities in a rural district in central Vietnam to respond to such health issues. DESIGN: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study using quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative methods used self-administered questionnaires. Qualitative methods (in-depth interviews and focus groups discussions) were used to broaden understanding of the quantitative material and to get additional information on actions taken. RESULTS: 1) Service delivery: Medical emergency services, especially surgical operations and referral systems, were not always available during the storm and flood seasons. 2) Governance: District emergency plans focus largely on disaster response rather than prevention. The plans did not clearly define the role of primary healthcare and had no clear information on the coordination mechanism among different sectors and organizations. 3) Financing: The budget for prevention and control of flood and storm activities was limited and had no specific items for healthcare activities. Only a little additional funding was available, but the procedures to get this funding were usually time-consuming. 4) Human resources: Medical rescue teams were established, but there were no epidemiologists or environmental health specialists to take care of epidemiological issues. Training on prevention and control of climate change and disaster-related health issues did not meet actual needs. 5) Information and research: Data that can be used for planning and management (including population and epidemiological data) were largely lacking. The district lacked a disease early-warning system. 6) Medical products and technology: Emergency treatment protocols were not available in every studied health facility. CONCLUSIONS: The primary care system capacity in rural Vietnam is inadequate for responding to storm and flood-related health problems in terms of preventive and treatment healthcare. Developing clear facility preparedness plans, which detail standard operating procedures during floods and identify specific job descriptions, would strengthen responses to future floods. Health facilities should have contingency funds available for emergency response in the event of storms and floods. Health facilities should ensure that standard protocols exist in order to improve responses in the event of floods. Introduction of a computerized health information system would accelerate information and data processing. National and local policies need to be strengthened and developed in a way that transfers into action in local rural communities.

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BACKGROUND: The primary care system in Vietnam has been shown to play a crucial role in disease prevention and health promotion. This study described the primary care system in a selected rural area in Vietnam in terms of its capacity for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). METHODS: The study was conducted in 2011 in Dong Hy district, Thai Nguyen province-a rural community located in northern Vietnam. Mixed methods were used, including quantitative and qualitative and literature review approaches, to collect data on the current status of the six building blocks of the primary care system in Dong Hy district. Selected health workers and stakeholders in the selected healthcare facilities were surveyed. RESULTS: A description of Dong Hy district's primary care capacity for NCD prevention and control is reported. (i) Service delivery: The current practice in NCD prevention and treatment is mainly based on a single risk factor rather than a combination of cardiovascular disease risks. (ii) Governance: At the primary care level, multi-sectoral collaborations are limited, and there is insufficient integration of NCD preventive activities. (iii) Financing: A national budget for NCD prevention and control is lacking. The cost of treatment and medicines is high, whereas the health insurance scheme limits the list of available medicines and the reimbursement ceiling level. Health workers have low remuneration despite their important roles in NCD prevention. (iv) Human resources: The quantity and quality of health staff working at the primary care level, especially those in preventive medicine, are insufficient. (v) Information and research: The health information system in the district is weak, and there is no specific information system for collecting population-based NCD data. (vi) Medical products and technology: Not all essential equipment and medicines recommended by the WHO are always available at the commune health centre. CONCLUSION: The capacity of the primary care system in Vietnam is still inadequate to serve the NCD-related health needs of the population. There is an urgent need to improve the primary care capacity for NCD prevention and management in Vietnam.

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