Epidemiological Characteristics of Visceral Leishmaniasis - Shanxi Province, China, 1950-2019

What is already known about this topic?

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the most serious form of leishmaniasis. In recent years, reported cases of VL have been gradually increasing in Shanxi Province, China.

What is added by this report?

The report describes the epidemiology of VL from 1950 to 2019 in Shanxi Province and the recent trend of VL reemergence.

What are the implications for public health practice?

Measures to prevent and control VL, such as health education, improving clinical diagnostics, strengthening epidemiological investigation capacity for VL cases, monitoring surveillance, and use of other evidence-based preventive measures, should be undertaken in Shanxi Province.

Effect of Comprehensive Care Based on Appropriate Chinese Medicine Techniques on Urinary Retention and Bladder Function Recovery after Total Hysterectomy in Patients with Cervical Cancer

Objective

To investigate the effect of comprehensive care based on appropriate Chinese medicine techniques on urinary retention and bladder function recovery after total hysterectomy in patients with cervical cancer.

Methods

A total of 148 cases admitted after radical hysterectomy for cervical cancer from January 2019 to early September 2019 were used as the observation sample and were divided into control and experimental groups based on a randomized double-blind method. There were 74 cases each. The control group was given comprehensive care, and the experimental group was given comprehensive care based on appropriate Chinese medicine techniques. The intervention period was 2 weeks after surgery. The recovery rate of bladder function and the occurrence of urinary retention were compared between the two groups, and the duration of postoperative retention of urinary catheter, the amount of residual urine, and the feeling of urination were counted.

Results

The experimental group had better urinary catheter retention time, time to first spontaneous voiding, time to get out of bed, and time to anal discharge than the control group; the experimental group had a higher rate of good bladder function recovery than the control group and better bladder recovery time, residual urine volume, and incidence of urinary retention than the control group; the patients in the experimental group had better UDI-6 scores.

Conclusion

The implementation of comprehensive care based on appropriate Chinese medicine techniques can relieve patients' difficulty in urination and improve their quality of life.

The use of cardiac MRI texture analysis to investigate left ventricle tissue characterisation in a healthy UK population

Funding Acknowledgements

Type of funding sources: Other. Main funding source(s): Medical Research Scotland(MRS) Guerbet Group

Background

Cardiac MR texture analysis (TA) has the potential to distinguish subtle differences amongst myocardial diseases, but with limited evidence in a healthy population. The aim of this study was to assess the application of TA to cardiac CINE MR Images of the left ventricle to evaluate variability and consistency in a large-scale healthy population. 

Method

A cohort of 600 healthy volunteers was recruited from the Tayside Screening for Prevention of Cardiac Events study. All subjects underwent short axis CINE CMR at 3T (including LVM), using a 2D ECG-gated breath-hold segmented steady-state gradient echo sequence with constant field-of-view and pixel size.  For each subject, the mid short-axis slices of the left ventricle, at ED and ES, were extracted for image analysis. The TA parameters (n = 50) for all images were derived using Mazda v4.7 by a single observer. Three different regions-of-interest (ROI) were applied to the LV myocardium at ED and ES, as follows:  1) ‘whole wall’ (figure 1 a and d); 2) ‘septal wall’ (figure 1 b and e); and 3) ‘lateral wall’ (figure 1 c and f).  Statistical comparisons were made for all texture features to establish how they varied between ED and ES, males versus females, different age ranges (40-45 years, 46-54 years, 55-63 years, and ≥ 64 years) and also between those with small (66.8 ± 5.88 g/m2), media (98.2 ± 15.28 g/m2) and large (146.2 ± 16.81 g/m2) LVM.  Finally, the images of 30 volunteers were analysed by a second observer to derive test-retest inter-observer variation as an index of measurement repeatability for each TA feature.

Results

  Of the original 50 TA features tested, the means of n = 45-49 features (number dependent on whether whole wall, septal wall or lateral wall) were significantly different when compared between ED and ES (p < 0.05). For comparisons with gender, the means of n = 36-43 of the original features were significantly different (p < 0.05).  Additionally, the means of n = 15-29 features were significantly different when tested between sub-cohorts of different ages (p < 0.05). When these data were combined together, ‘lateral wall’ was less sensitive, but for ‘whole wall’ and ‘septal wall’, the means of n = 7 of the original TA features were able to identify statistically significant differences between (i) ED and ES, (ii) males and females, (iii) different sub-cohorts of age, and (iv) different sub-cohorts of LVM (figure 2).  Further, the root mean square test-retest inter-observer coefficient of variation associated with the repeatability of these measures was <10%. The n = 7 most useful TA features were ‘GrMean’, ‘GrNonZeros’, ‘Average_RLNonUni’, ‘Average_LngREmph’, ‘Average_ShrtREmph’, ‘Average_Fraction’ and ‘S5_Average_Entropy’.

Conclusion

  These findings showed the repeatability of CMR texture anaysis and capability to identify differences in a healthy population. Further work may identify whether these features are able to differentiate between different cardiovascular diseases.

Research on the predictive effect of a combined model of ARIMA and neural networks on human brucellosis in Shanxi Province, China: a time series predictive analysis

BACKGROUND

Brucellosis is a major public health problem that seriously affects developing countries and could cause significant economic losses to the livestock industry and great harm to human health. Reasonable prediction of the incidence is of great significance in controlling brucellosis and taking preventive measures.

METHODS

Our human brucellosis incidence data were extracted from Shanxi Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. We used seasonal-trend decomposition using Loess (STL) and monthplot to analyse the seasonal characteristics of human brucellosis in Shanxi Province from 2007 to 2017. The autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, a combined model of ARIMA and the back propagation neural network (ARIMA-BPNN), and a combined model of ARIMA and the Elman recurrent neural network (ARIMA-ERNN) were established separately to make predictions and identify the best model. Additionally, the mean squared error (MAE), mean absolute error (MSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were used to evaluate the performance of the model.

RESULTS

We observed that the time series of human brucellosis in Shanxi Province increased from 2007 to 2014 but decreased from 2015 to 2017. It had obvious seasonal characteristics, with the peak lasting from March to July every year. The best fitting and prediction effect was the ARIMA-ERNN model. Compared with those of the ARIMA model, the MAE, MSE and MAPE of the ARIMA-ERNN model decreased by 18.65, 31.48 and 64.35%, respectively, in fitting performance; in terms of prediction performance, the MAE, MSE and MAPE decreased by 60.19, 75.30 and 64.35%, respectively. Second, compared with those of ARIMA-BPNN, the MAE, MSE and MAPE of ARIMA-ERNN decreased by 9.60, 15.73 and 11.58%, respectively, in fitting performance; in terms of prediction performance, the MAE, MSE and MAPE decreased by 31.63, 45.79 and 29.59%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

The time series of human brucellosis in Shanxi Province from 2007 to 2017 showed obvious seasonal characteristics. The fitting and prediction performances of the ARIMA-ERNN model were better than those of the ARIMA-BPNN and ARIMA models. This will provide some theoretical support for the prediction of infectious diseases and will be beneficial to public health decision making.

Texture analysis of CINE CMR image in healthy volunteers-preliminary results

Background

Texture analysis (TA) is a technique that measures the MRI signal via pixel greyscale variations (figure 1), and may be useful in cardiac MR (CMR) for detecting features not visible to the human eye.

Purpose

To use TA to examine myocardial CINE MR Images in a cohort of volunteers. Major feature differences were anticipated between images at end diastole (ED) and end systole (ES), whilst minor differences were anticipated between younger and older volunteers.

Methods

Two cohorts (each n=30) were studied - young (44±3 years), and old (68±4 years). A 2D ECG-gated breath-hold segmented steady-state gradient echo sequence was used. Myocardial TA features were derived using MaZda v4.7. Measurements were made by two observers.

Results

A total of 39 TA features were significantly different between ED and ES (p<0.05), and 9 features were significantly different between the young and old cohorts (p<0.05). Finally, 15 of the original 50 TA features were repeatable (root mean squared coefficient of variation under 10%).

Conclusion

Selected TA features in CINE CMR are repeatable and can identify differences between major and minor texture changes.

Funding Acknowledgement

Type of funding source: Other. Main funding source(s): Medical Research Scotland, Guerbet Group

Monitoring and evaluation of intervals from onset of fever to diagnosis before "1-3-7" approach in malaria elimination: a retrospective study in Shanxi Province, China from 2013 to 2018

BACKGROUND

China's 1-3-7 approach was extensively implemented to monitor the timeframe of case reporting, case investigation and foci response in the malaria elimination. However, activities before diagnosis and reporting (before '1') would counteract the efficiency of 1-3-7 approach but few data have evaluated this issue. This study aims to evaluate the timelines between onset of fever and diagnosis at healthcare facilities in Shanxi Province.

METHODS

Routine data were extracted from IDIRMS and NMISM database from 2013 to 2018. Time intervals between onset of fever and healthcare-seeking and between healthcare-seeking and diagnosis were calculated. Each of the documented malaria cases was geo-coded and paired to the county-level layers of polygon.

RESULTS

A total of 90 cases were reported in 2013-2018 in Shanxi Province, and 73% of cases reported at provincial health facilities. All malaria cases were imported from Africa (90%) and Southeast Asia (10%) especially around the Chinese Spring Festival (n = 46, 51%). The median days between fever and healthcare-seeking and between healthcare-seeking and diagnosis of malaria were 3 and 2, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

The current "1-3-7" approach is well executed in Shanxi Province, but delays intervals observed in case finding before 1-3-7 approach occurred in all levels of facilities in Shanxi Province, which imply that more efforts are highlighted for timely case finding. Health education should be provided for improving awareness of healthcare-seeking, and various technical training aiming at the physicians should be carried out to improve diagnosis of malaria.

Spatio-temporal cluster and distribution of human brucellosis in Shanxi Province of China between 2011 and 2016

In recent years, the incidence of human brucellosis (HB) in the Shanxi province has ranked to be the top five among the 31 China provinces. HB data in Shanxi province between 2011 and 2016 were collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Spatial and temporal distribution of HB was evaluated using spatial autocorrelation analysis and space-time scan analysis. The global Moran's I index ranged from 0.37 to 0.50 between 2011 and 2016 (all P < 0.05), and the "high-high" clusters of HB were located at the northern Shanxi, while the "low-low" clusters in the central and southeastern Shanxi. The high-incidence time interval was between March and July with a 2-fold higher risk of HB compared to the other months in the same year. One most likely cluster and three secondary clusters were identified. The radius of the most likely cluster region was 158.03 km containing 10,051 HB cases. Compared to the remaining regions, people dwelling in the most likely region were reported 4.50-fold ascended risk of incident HB. HB cases during the high-risk time interval of each year were more likely to be younger, to be males or to be farmers or herdsman than that during the low-risk time interval. The HB incidence had a significantly high correlation with the number of the cattle or sheep especially in the northern Shanxi. HB in Shanxi showed unique spatio-temporal clustering. Public health concern for HB in Shanxi should give priority to the northern region especially between the late spring and early summer.

[Investigation of human brucellosis diagnosis and report quality in medical institutions in key areas of Shanxi province]

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of human brucellosis diagnosis and reporting in medical institutions in Shanxi province, and understand the performance of clinical doctors to diagnose human brucellosis according to diagnostic criteria. Methods: Field investigation was conducted in 6 medical institutions in the key areas of human brucellosis in Shanxi province. The diagnosis data of the reported brucellosis cases in 2015 were collected and reviewed retrospectively for the evaluation of the diagnosis accuracy with systematic sampling method. The database was established with Excel 2010 and the descriptive analysis and statistical test were conducted with software R 3.3.2. Results: The diagnosis consistent rate of the 377 brucellosis cases reviewed was 70.8% (267/377), the diagnosis consistent rates in medical institutions at city-level and country-level were 77.0% (127/165) and 66.0% (140/212) respectively, the differences had significance (χ(2)=5.4, P=0.02). Among the reviewed cases, the diagnosis consistent rate of laboratory diagnosis and clinical diagnosis were 87.1% (256/294) and 13.3% (11/83) respectively, and the differences had significance (χ(2)=170.7, P<0.001). Among the 21 investigated clinical doctors, the numbers of the doctors who correctly diagnosed the suspected cases, probable cases and lab-confirmed cases were only 3, 0 and 8 respectively. All of the clinical doctors knew that it is necessary to report the brucellosis cases within 24 hours after diagnosis. Conclusion: The accuracy of human brucellosis diagnosis in key areas of human brucellosis in Shanxi was low, and the performance of the clinical doctors to diagnose human brucellosis according to diagnostic and case classification criteria was unsatisfied.