Changing trends of genital herpes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1982–2008

Abstract

some evidence that financial incentives have no impact on chlamydia screening.The main limitation to the study is that in spite of most respondents saying they would be willing to return postal samples for chlamydia testing, it is likely that actual response rates would be much less in practice. This is reflected in the results of studies by Macleod et al. 3 and Bloomfield et al. 4 who found that uptake of postal chlamydia screening was only around 20-30%. In addition, coverage was lower in areas that were more deprived, and had higher proportions of residents from ethic minority groups. 3 The other weaknesses of the study are the small size and that findings may not be generalizable to non-GU medicine populations. Respondents were also given a specified list of possible 'encouragers' and 'barriers' to testing that they ticked; although they were able to suggest other answers, this could have been a possible source of bias. However, a website where anyone could order postal chlamydia test kits and check their results online has been shown to be effective in expanding testing among young people. 5 Morris and colleagues demonstrated that chlamydia screening in non-clinical settings may be a cost-effective way of identifying infection in those who do not regularly access health care. Our results from an ethnically diverse inner city population suggest that a public health campaign involving postal chlamydia testing could also contribute to the control of chlamydia infection in some ethnically diverse, possibly hard-to-reach populations.i Note that the changing denominator reflects either:(1) The number of respondents who answered the question; or (2) The proportion of respondents who selected a given option for questions where they were asked to select the options that applied to them.

The impact of interspecies recombination on human herpes simplex virus evolution and host immune recognition

“…This finding, coupled with our documentation of the generation of the UL47 – UL50 recombinant in a genitally co-infected person, suggests that genital co-infection fosters interspecies recombination. This is noteworthy as the incidence of genital HSV-1 has been shown in multiple studies to be increasing (Chiam et al, 2010; Gilbert et al, 2011; Ryder et al, 2009). The evidence we present here indicates that this epidemiologic shift could lead to an increase in the frequency of recombinant HSV-2.…”

“…In particular, it remains unknown whether interspecies recombination can affect loci other than those previously described in UL15, UL29, UL30, and UL39 and if interspecies recombination continues to affect contemporary HSV populations as all events described to date are thought to have occurred in a historical context. If HSV interspecies recombinants are still being generated, it is also unclear if the increasing number of immunocompromised hosts (Harpaz et al, 2016) or if changes in the epidemiology of HSV infection, such as the increase in genital HSV-1 (Chiam et al, 2010; Gilbert et al, 2011; Ryder et al, 2009), will alter the impact interspecies recombination has on genomic variation in HSV. We sought to answer these questions by performing a comprehensive survey of interspecies recombination on a large dataset of HSV genome sequences comprised of both previously available and newly-generated sequences.…”

Active components of mantis eggs and their immunomodulatory effect in a mouse model

“…Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is an ubiquitous pathogen, responsible for neonatal malignancies, and causes disease in 8 to 60 cases per 100,000 live births in the USA (Matsura and Morooka 1983;Westley et al 2011). Despite significant progresses in clinical treatment strategies of oral HSV-1 infection, there are only a few approved drugs (Hooi et al 2002;Westley et al 2011). The keratitis, encephalitis, and infection-related blindness are the most serious complications of the oral HSV-1 infection in adults and children (Huber 2003).…”