This study aims to analyze the length polymorphisms in sequence-tagged-site (STS) sY1291 of the Y chromosome in Vietnamese men of infertile couples. All 322 DNA samples were amplified with the sY1291 primer by the quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR) assay. DNA sequencing technique was employed to evaluate the accuracy of QF-PCR results. The study showed 273 out of 322 DNA samples had the presence of STS sY1291, accounted for 84.78%. The QF-PCR results showed that there were various lengths in STS sY1291: 507 bp, 512 bp, 523 bp and 527 bp. The most prevalent length in STS sY1291 was 507 bp (87.5%), the others were 512 bp (4.8%), 523 bp (4.8%) and 527 bp (2.9%). We found that the observed length polymorphisms derived from differences in the number of mononucleotide Thymine (T) repeats in its structure. It stretched from 22 T to 39 T. DNA sequencing results identified that the number of mononucleotide T repeats causes these polymorphisms. However, the pair-wise alignment between the obtained and reference sequence was 77%. It can be seen that the length polymorphisms in STS sY1291 observed in QF-PCR results was accurate but it is still difficult to sequence fragments with mononucleotide repeats.

Objectives Understanding medical staff’s prescription behaviors helps improve the quality of prescriptions and the rationality of medication use. Although factors affecting the prescribing decisions were discussed in various studies worldwide, limited knowledge of these issues has been reported in Vietnam. This paper aims to examine factors that influence prescribing behavior concerning medical staff’s demographics and characteristic differences. Methods Quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study, using adapted questionnaire consisting of 27 factors divided into 9 factor categories, was conducted with medical staff in Mekong Delta during June–July, 2019. Rasch analysis was performed to assess the questionnaire psychometric properties. Descriptive analysis, parametric tests and non-parametric tests were utilized to address the study objectives. Key findings A total of 201 participants completed the questionnaire. A majority of participants (>90%) agreed that their own decision to prescribe a drug was influenced by several factors such as drug safety and efficacy (92.5%), patient history (92.0%), patient income (92.0%) and patient disease status (91.0%). There were significant age differences in influences on prescribing decision. Medical staff aged under 30 appreciated the role of pharmacists higher than whose aged 31–40 (P-value = 0.010) and over 40 (P-value = 0.013). Additionally, they were more concerned with ‘patient characteristics’ including patient request, expectations, and disease status when making prescribing decisions compared with whose aged over 40 (P-value = 0.005). Conclusions The study revealed various factors influencing medical staff prescription decision-making processes. These findings could be useful for pharmaceutical companies in Vietnam in developing marketing strategies, and for policy-makers in timely improvement of prescription quality.

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