ABSTRACT
Dengue fever (DF) is a major public health concern in the Dominican Republic. In recent years, several epidemics of DF have been reported to the Pan American Health Office (PAHO), but the extent of the epidemics has not been clearly understood yet. Therefore, we conducted a nationwide seroepidemiology of dengue (DEN) infection. At the same time, we conducted an interview survey to assess public awareness regarding the disease. The serum samples were collected at seven main cities in the Dominican Republic and screened for DEN antibody with a commercial ELISA kit. A total of 2007 serum specimens were examined. The prevalence of DEN antibody in the seven cities varied between 43.1 and 89.7%. Neutralization (N) test carried out on the ELISA-positive serum from Samana, one of the high antibody-prevalent cities, revealed that all the sera showed positive to at least two DEN serotypes. Geometric mean N titers against DEN-1, 2, 3 and 4 were 40.5, 463.7, 59.9 and 454.4 respectively. No difference in antibody prevalence was observed between males and females. It appeared that a high level of awareness regarding DF did little affect DEN prevalence. Strong, concrete public health strategies that motivate the local community to combat DF are required.
ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to clarify the relationship between power estimated by blood lactate movement during intermittent running test (Maximal Anaerobic Running Test : MART), and velocity of middle distance running (V 800 m, V 1500 m) . The subjects were well-trained male middledistance runners (n=8) .<BR>MART consisted of a variable number of 20 seconds runs on a treadmill with a 100 seconds recovery period between runs. The runs were performed ona a 4° incline. After 40 second recovery, earlobe blood samples were taken and blood lactate concentrations were analyzed. The first run was performed at 250 m/min. Velocity of the treadmill was increased by 25 m/min for each consecutive run until volitional exhaustion.<BR>The power requirement associated with the absolute value of blood lactate (La) and relative value of peak blood lactate (PBLa) was determined from the La or %PBLa vs power curve by linear interpolation from the two consecutive La values which were above and below the desired value.<BR>Results were summarized as follows:<BR>(1) Maximal power (Pmax) for MART was correlated positively with V800m (r=0.880, P<0.01) and V1500m (r=0.948, p<0.001) .<BR>(2) Power estimated at 40% value of PBLa (P40%La) correlated positively with V 1500 m (r=0.903, P<0.01), and at 60% value of PBLa (P60%La) was correlated positively with V800m (r=0.835, P<0.01) and 1500m (r=0.936, p<0.001) .<BR>These results indicate that MART is a valid test for estimating middle distance running performance and P40%La, and P60%La are important indexes with 800-m and 1500-m running.