Culture versus Policy: More Global Collaboration to Effectively Combat COVID-19.

The outbreak of COVID-19 seriously challenges every government with regard to capacity and management of public health systems facing the catastrophic emergency. Culture and anti-epidemic policy do not necessarily conflict with each other. All countries and governments should be more tolerant to each other in seeking cultural and political consensus to overcome this historically tragic pandemic together.

Mixed strategy to allocate resources with air pollution treatment in China: based on the analytic network process and large-group decision-making method.

The resource allocation of air pollution treatment in China is a complex problem, since many alternatives are available and many criteria influence mutually. A number of stakeholders participate in this issue holding different opinions because of the benefits they value. So a method is needed, based on the analytic network process (ANP) and large-group decision-making (LGDM), to rank the alternatives considering interdependent criteria and stakeholders' opinions. In this method, the criteria related to air pollution treatment are examined by experts. Then, the network structure of the problem is constructed based on the relationships between the criteria. Further, every participant in each group provide comparison matrices by judging the importance between criteria according to dominance, regarding a certain criteria (or goal), and the geometric average comparison matrix of each group is obtained. The decision weight of each group is derived by combining the subjective weight and the objective weight, in which the subjective weight is provided by organizers, while the objective weight is determined by considering the consensus levels of groups. The final comparison matrices are obtained by the geometric average of comparison matrices and the decision weights. Next, the resource allocation is made according to the priorities of the alternatives using the super decision software. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the use of the proposed method.

Evidence of association of vitamin D receptor Apa I gene polymorphism with bone mineral density in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis.

The vitamin D receptor (VDR) was the first candidate gene to be studied in relation to osteoporosis, and most attention has focused on polymorphisms situated near the 3' flank of VDR. The aim of this study was to investigate the association about VDR gene Apa I polymorphism with bone mineral density (BMD) in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. We studied a total of 136 postmenopausal women with a mean age of 56.36 +/- 10.29 years. Among them, a total of 75 had osteoporosis, 37 had osteopenia, and 24 had normal BMD. Venous blood samples were obtained for evaluation of bone metabolism and genotyping. The VDR Apa I genotype was determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. BMDs at the lumbar spine and hip were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Postmenopausal women with aa genotype had significantly lower BMD values (grams per centimeter square) at lumbar spines compared to persons with AA genotype. Also, postmenopausal women with AA genotype had significantly higher serum Ca level than the subjects with aa genotype. In conclusion, our result may indicate that VDR Apa I gene polymorphism may be responsible for a important part of the heritable component of lumbar spine BMD in postmenopausal women, possibly related to impaired calcium absorption from the bowel.

[Investigation of hemodialysis patients in terms of the presence of occult hepatitis B]. / Hemodiyaliz hastalarinin gizli hepatit B varligi yönünden arastirilmasi.

The presence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA in case of negative HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) in serum is known as "occult hepatitis B". There are many reports indicating that occult HBV infections are more frequently encountered in case of hepatocellular carcinoma, hemodialysis practice and co-infections with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of HBV-DNA in HBsAg negative hemodialysis. patients and subjects who had never experienced hemodialysis. A total of 226 HBsAg negative sera were included to the study, of which 153 were from hemodialysis patients (97 male, 56 female; mean age: 41.3 +/- 5.8 years), and 73 were from non-hemodialyzed individuals (46 male, 27 female; mean age: 36.5 +/- 6.9 years) who had serological evidence of previous HBV and HCV infections. Of these 73 subjects, 41 were anti-HCV positive, 22 were "anti-HBc IgG positive alone", seven were anti-HBc IgG and anti-HBs positive, and three were anti-HBc IgG and anti-HBe positive, while 40 of 153 (26.1%) hemodialysis patients were anti-HCV positive. HBV and HCV markers were detected by commercial enzyme immunoassays (bioMerieux, France and Murex, UK, respectively), and HBV-DNA testing was performed by a commercial real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR; 5700 and 7700 Sequence Detection System, Applied Biosystems, UK) assay. Nineteen (12.4%) of HBsAg-negative hemodialysis patients and five (6.8%) of the non-hemodialyzed subjects were found positive for HBV-DNA (viral loads were > or =10(4) copies/ml, and 10(3)-10(4) copies/ml, repectively). The rates of occult HBV infection in the anti-HCV positive hemodialysis patients and anti-HCV positive non-hemodialyzed subjects were detected as 27.5% (11/40) and 2.4% (1/41), respectively. These rates in the other groups were found as follows; 7.1% (8/113) in the anti-HCV negative hemodialysis patients, 9.1% (2/22) in the "anti-HBc positive alone" subjects, and 20% (2/10) in the subjects positive for anti-HBc+anti-HBs or anti-HBe. The results of this study indicated that the prevalence of HBV viremia (12.4%) in hemodialysis patients being more prominent in those of anti-HCV positive patients (27.5%) should not be overlooked. In conclusion, the hemodialysis patients should be screened by sensitive PCR-based methods for occult HBV infections, even if they were negative for HBsAg, in order to prevent or at least to decrease the transmission risk of HBV infection which is still an important health problem in dialysis units.

[TT virus and hepatitis G virus in different risk groups in Afyon]. / Afyon bölgesi farkli risk gruplarinda TT virus ve hepatit G virus arastirilmasi.

The main transmission route of TT virus (Transfusion-Transmitted Virus, TTV) and hepatitis G virus (HGV) is by parenteral route of blood and blood-products. Since they form the same risk group, some of TTV or HGV positive patients may also be infected by hepatitis B virus (HBV) and/or hepatitis C virus (HCV). In this study, the presence of TTV and HGV has been investigated by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR, GeneAmp 5700 Sequence Detection System, AB), in 40 hepatitis B, 30 hepatitis C and 5 hepatitis B and C co-infected patients, 50 HBV and HCV negative hemodialysis patients, and 50 randomly selected healthy blood donors. As a result, 37 (21.1%) TTV and 11 (6.3%) HGV positivity were detected, out of a total 175 cases. The positivity rates for TTV and HGV were found as 40% and 5% in HBV-positive, 23.3% and 20% in HCV-positive, 20% and 20% in HBV+HCV co-infected patients, 20% and 4% in hemodialysis patients, and 6% and 0% in healthy blood donors, respectively. In conclusion, as the positivity rates were not low for these viruses, their role on the hepatitis pathogenesis should be further investigated by detailed studies.