Urban livestock provides an important source of food and income, but it may increase the risks for disease transmission. Vectors, such as mosquitoes, might increase and thereby cause an enhanced transmission of infectious diseases, such as dengue fever; considered the most important mosquito-borne viral disease globally. This cross-sectional study evaluated the awareness of dengue fever and investigated how the presence of dengue vectors is affected by the keeping of livestock in urban households in the city of Hanoi, Vietnam.From February to March 2018, during the season of lowest occurrence of dengue in Hanoi, 140 households were interviewed, of which 69 kept livestock. A general trend was observed; respondents living in the Dan Phuong district, a peri-urban district, had better knowledge and practice regarding dengue as compared to the urban Ha Dong district. In total, 3899 mosquitoes were collected and identified, of which 52 (1.33%) were Aedes species. A significant difference between the two districts was observed, with more households in Ha Dong having Aedes spp. mosquitoes (p = 0.02) and a higher incidence of dengue fever (p = 0.001). There was no significant association between livestock-rearing and the presence of Aedes spp. mosquitoes (p = 0.955), or between livestock-rearing and the incidence of dengue fever (p = 0.08).In conclusion, this study could not find any indication that households keeping livestock were at higher risk of dengue virus infections in Hanoi during the season of lowest occurrence of dengue, but clearly indicated the need of more information provided to urban inhabitants, particularly on personal protection.

Rat carcasses obtained from pest control interventions can potentially be used for an efficient surveillance of zoonotic diseases such as leptospirosis. To evaluate the performance of different laboratory methods for detection of pathogenic Leptospira spp., heart and kidney samples from wild Norway rats were analyzed by microscopic agglutination test (MAT, the gold standard), a commercial IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and by an optimized quantitative PCR (secY qPCR, followed by sequencing). We found secY qPCR to be as sensitive as MAT for screening of Leptospira infection in pest control rats and selected secY qPCR for a larger screening of rats from urban and rural areas in central and southern Sweden. We identified secY qPCR positive rats from the cities Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, which were further confirmed by sequencing.

Three principles for the use of HPLC with spectrophotometric detection to determine the concentration of furosemide and of 4‐chloro‐5‐sulfamoyl anthranilic acid (CSA) were studied. A reversed phase microbondapack C18 column was used for the separation of either unchanged furosemide (I), CSA (II) or the diazo product of CSA (III). The sensitivity of the methods for the determination of furosemide added to serum in vitro were for I 0.05, for II 0.020 and for III 0.01 μg/ml. The methods I and II were used to study the excretion pattern in the urine of furosemide and CSA after intravenous injection of 80 mg to 10 normal subjects. An average of 48.1±9.8% (S.D.) of the furosemide was excreted during the first hour as unchanged furosemide. Simultaneously 1.9±0.8% of the dose was excreted as CSA. Only very low concentrations of CSA were found in serum and that metabolite apparently was excreted with a higher renal clearance than furosemide during the period 30–60 min. after the administration (303±145 ml/min. for CSA and 88±23 ml/min. for furosemide). During the 24 hour period following the administration 52.6±8.1 mg was excreted as unchanged furosemide and 11.4±5.2 mg as a glucuronidated product.