Recombinant HEV Capsid protein (genotype 4)

Objective: The study was designed to examine the hypothesis whether the course and severity of hepatitis E virus (HEV)-related liver disease is worse during pregnancy. Method: The prospective study included 1088 patients (550 pregnant; 538 nonpregnant) with clinically and biochemically confirmed acute viral hepatitis (AVH) or acute liver failure (ALF) and were subjected to a complete panel of hepatitis serology. Results: In the pregnant cohort, HEV was the cause of infection in 80.36% (442/550) of cases, whereas non-HEV accounted for 19.63 (108/550) of cases. In the ALF pregnant group, the prevalence of HEV was observed in 73.38% (102/139) of cases, whereas other viruses accounted for 26.61% (37/139) of illness. Ninety-eight of 129 (75.96%) cases of HEV-infected pregnant women died, whereas non-HEV infection was responsible for only 31 of 129 (24.04%) cases' death in comparison. Serum viral load in the ALF group was also significantly higher than that in the AVH group in the pregnant (24578.6 +/- 12410.3 vs. 6821.9 +/- 1832.7, respectively) cohort and nonpregnant cohort (583.6 +/- 187.34 vs. 298.68 +/- 65.77, respectively). Conclusion: HEV infection has a higher incidence, more severe course, and greater mortality in the pregnant cohort than in the nonpregnant cohort.

A Dynamic Programming (DP) formulation is developed to find the global optimal solution to the energy management of a parallel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) equipped with a Dual-Clutch Transmission (DCT). The effects of integrating in the DP formulation the losses accounting for gearshifts and engine starts are studied in terms of the overall fuel consumption; the optimal control solutions obtained depends on the occurrence of these transient events. These sources of dissipation are modeled through physical considerations thus enabling the DP algorithm to decide when it is more convenient, in terms of minimizing the total energy consumption, to perform either a gearshift or an engine start. This capability differentiates the DP formulation here presented from those presented in previous studies.