Vol. 1 No. 2 (2016)

Three months ago, an elderly male patient came to the hospital with orthostatic hypotension. His supine blood pressure (BP) was 160/8mmHg and his standing BP was 80/45mmHg. The patient was started on midodrine 10mg TID and fludrocortisoneacetate. He felt less dizzy even the BP still decreased to 110/80 on standing. He was sent home because he became asymptomatic with mild to moderate orthostatic hypotension. However, today he came back to the emergency room with syncope.

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Helicobacter pylori is a gastric pathogen that causes several gastroduodenal disorders such as peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer. Eradication efforts of H. pylori are often hampered by antimicrobial resistance in many countries, including Vietnam. Here, the study aimed to investigate the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance among H. pylori clinical isolates across 13 hospitals in Vietnam. The study further evaluated the clarithromycin resistance patterns of H. pylori strains. In order to address the study interests, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, epsilometer test and PCR-based sequencing were performed on a total of 193 strains isolated from patients, including 136 children (3–15 years of age) and 57 adults (19–69 years of age). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed that the overall resistance to amoxicillin, clarithromycin, levofloxacin, metronidazole, and tetracycline was 10.4%, 85.5%, 24.4%, 37.8%, and 23.8% respectively. The distribution of minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of clarithromycin-resistant strains was 85.5% with MIC >0.5 μg/mL. The majority of the clarithromycin resistant isolates (135 of 165 subjects) have MICs ranging from 2 μg/mL to 16 μg/mL. Furthermore, sequencing detection of mutations in 23S rRNA gene revealed that strains resistant and susceptible to clarithromycin contained both A2143G and T2182C mutations. Of all isolates, eight clarithromycin-resistant isolates (MIC >0.5 μg/mL) had no mutations in the 23S rRNA gene. Collectively, these results demonstrated that a proportion of clarithromycin-resistant H. pylori strains, which are not related to the 23S rRNA gene mutations, could be potentially related to other mechanisms such as the presence of an efflux pump or polymorphisms in the CYP2C19 gene. Therefore, the present study suggests that providing susceptibility testing prior to treatment or alternative screening strategies for antimicrobial resistance is important for future clinical practice. Further studies on clinical guidelines and treatment efficacy are pivotal for successful eradication of H. pylori infection.

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Internet of Things (IoT) plays an important role for solving critical problems such as climate change, smart city, smart agriculture, pollution of air, water and land. Despite being one of the leading countries in information technology outsourcing and facing a lot of critical problems of life environment and health, research and application of IoT in Vietnam are very fragmented. We thus analyze four critical application domains in Vietnam and the role of IoT for solving those problems.

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Inorganic phosphate (Pi) is transported across the plasma membrane by sodium-dependent phosphate transporters belonging to solute carrier families 34 (SLC34) and 20A (SLC20A). SLC34 has been well characterized and studied. Recently, the role of SLC20A in many pathological conditions is emerged. In this review, a brief overview of characteristics of this family will be provided.

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Mammals use the olfactory system as one of the basic instincts to avoid dangers and search for food. Many researches showed olfactory receptors (ORs) in mammals are encoded by the largest multigene family. Beside it has been suggested that the activation of ORs also have the links to reproductive and immune systems. Understanding the operation mechanism of OR system could lead to the way to improve the human’s life quality as well as to develop some better strategies in the livestock industry. Our report here revealed the almost complete data sets of the current OR genes from NCBI database. Although the number of functional OR genes in pigs (1,113) and cows (881) are lower than rats (1,201) and mice (1,037) as well, they are still relatively high and should be highly considered for further application in the livestock industry, especially in the process to produce the best and suitable food for them. The most important aspect is this data could contribute as the available data to get more understanding in the evolutionary process of species through the environment condition changed.

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Teaching listening skills in a test preparation course has been regarded as boring, challenging, daunting, and non-communicative. Games and activities proven pedagogically sound and effective were recommended to make the teaching of the test preparation listening skills courses more fun and engaging as well as integrated with other language skills. A review of studies on using games in teaching listening was made before specific games and activities were suggested. An attempt was made to divide the games and activities into three categories corresponding with the three parts of a typical TOEFL PBT listening section, and flexible application was highly recommended to suit a particular purpose. 

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Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) are the second most common malignant tumor of the pancreas. Neuroendocrine tumors are neoplasms that arise from cells of the endocrine and nervous systems. They all share common features such as having special secretory granules and producing biogenic amines and polypeptide hormones. The mean age of PanNETs occurrence is of 58 years old, and although their prognosis are better than that of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, they are still poor tumors with an average overall 5 years survival only 42%. PanNETs are well classified into functional versus non-functional tumors. While functional PanNETsare easily to be recognized by their classic clinical presentations such as Whipple’s triad for insulinoma or the migratory necrolytic erythema for glucagonoma, patients with non-functional PanNETs usually do not suffer from symptoms due to hormone hypersecretion, even if hormone levels are elevated on laboratory evaluation. Although several TNM classification systems for PanNETs patients have been established, a recent study suggests that the ENETs (European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society) TNM classification was superior to the AJCC (American Joint Committee on Cancer) or the WHO2010 grading system. This review aims to present those classification systems as well as list important genetic signatures in PanNETs.

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Neurendocrine tumors (NETs) is a rare tumor with incidence about 2 cases per 100,000 persons but they represent a clinical challenge because of their varied presentations and initial studying images to locate the tumors may be inconclusive. Based on the characteristic of peptide and amine producing of those tumor cells, the intracellular markers of endocrine tissue, such as chromogranin A, synaptophysin, and neuron-specific enolase can be used in the diagnosis. NETs can be classified as carcinoid tumors or functional and non-functional NETs. While functional NETs and carcinoid tumors can be revealed by their dramatic clinical symptoms due to it over production of endogenous hormones or vasoactive substances, nonfunctional NETs are silent and therefore may be metastasized at the time of detection. This review will summarize the heritable tumor syndromes that related to NETs, the main clinical symptoms as well as the methods to diagnose NETs.

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