IntroductionVaccine hesitancy is a complex public health issue referring to concerns about the safety, efficacy or need for vaccination. Relatively little is known about vaccine hesitancy in Switzerland. This ongoing study (2017–2021) focuses on biomedical and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers and their patients since healthcare professionals play important roles in vaccination decision-making. This national research programme seeks to assess the sociocultural determinants of vaccine hesitancy regarding childhood and human papillomavirus vaccines in Switzerland. We aim to provide a detailed characterisation of vaccine hesitancy, including CAM and biomedical perspectives, patient–provider interactions, and sociocultural factors, to establish the mediating effects of vaccine hesitancy on underimmunisation, and to design an intervention to improve vaccination communication and counselling among physicians, parents and adolescents.Methods and analysisOur transdisciplinary team employs a sequential exploratory mixed-methods study design. We have established a network of more than 150 medical providers across Switzerland, including more than 40 CAM practitioners. For the qualitative component, we conduct interviews with parents, youth, and biomedical and CAM providers and observations of vaccination consultations and school vaccination information sessions. For the quantitative component, a sample of 1350 parents of young children and 722 young adults (15–26 years) and their medical providers respond to questionnaires. We measure vaccine hesitancy with the Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines 15-item survey and review vaccination certificates to assess vaccination status. We administer additional questions based on findings from qualitative research, addressing communication with medical providers, vaccine information sources and perceptions of risk control vis-à-vis vaccine-preventable diseases. The questionnaires capture sociodemographics, political views, religion and spirituality, and moral foundations.Ethics and disseminationThe study was approved by the local ethics committee. The results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated to healthcare professionals, researchers and the public via conferences and public presentations.
The deep biomedical knowledge reached in the past decades in many fields of medicine and biology has been accompanied by continuous technological progress in measurement instrumentation and analysis techniques. This development is important also to improve the characterization and the understanding of the interactions between nanoparticles and biological liquids, due to emerging applications such as drug delivery, bioimaging, biosensing, diagnostics and photothermal therapy. In this study, we characterize the interaction between mouse serum and gold nanoparticles (NPs) and nanorods (NRs) by Modulated 3D Cross-correlation Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), in order to demonstrate that this technique can be applied to the investigation of complex biological liquids. The analysis of the size distribution of the hydrodynamic radius reveals three different contributions from particles motion, associated to rotation, translation and agglomerates. Moreover, we show that the interaction between Au NPs or NRs and mouse serum depends on the aspect ratio of the Au particles. These results are promising for deepening the knowledge on proteins-nanoparticles interaction, for laboratory-based experiments as well as for sensing and diagnostic applications and nanoparticles based medical therapy.
Protein-nanoparticle suspensions are nowadays widely studied for the development of medical and environmental biosensors. The complexity of interactions between nanoparticles and biological fluids, together with the increasing use of dynamic light scattering (DLS) for their characterization, support the need to develop common standards for DLS measurements and analysis, in order to enable a reliable comparison of measurement results. In this study, we use 3D cross-correlation Dynamic Light Scattering (3Dcc-DLS) for the characterization of gold nanoparticles (Au NP), with spherical and rod shape, stabilized with sodium citrate, and their interaction with bovine serum albumin (BSA). We show that for Au nanorods it is possible to distinguish the rotational and translational motion. Moreover, we monitor the interaction of Au NPs and BSA over time, in order to analyse the first step of protein corona formation. Our results show that Au nanorods interact more than Au nanospheres with BSA. From the evolution of the rotational and translational peaks we conclude that the proteins tend to bind on the long cylindrical side of the nanorods.
This paper reviews dynamic light scattering (DLS) of gold nanoparticle-protein interactions for the model protein bovine serum albumin (BSA), as well as in complex biofluids, at the example of mouse serum. DLS data of nanorods of various aspect ratio, of proteins and of mouse serum are discussed in terms of the analysis of their hydrodynamic radii, leading to the distinction of rotational and translational motion as well as to the detection of agglomerates. We address in particular advances obtained by modulated 3D cross correlation dynamic light scattering and recent progress using the CORENN algorithm for analysis of DLS data.
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