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Infectious diseases remain the major causes of morbidity and mortality in China despite substantial progress in their control. China is a major contributor to the worldwide infectious disease burden because of its population size. The association of China with the rest of the world through travel and trade means that events in the country can affect distant populations. The ecological interaction of people with animals in China favours the emergence of new microbial threats. The public-health system has to be prepared to deal with the challenges of newly emerging infectious diseases and at the same time try to control existing diseases. To address the microbial threats, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, the government has committed substantial resources to the implementation of new strategies, including the development of a real-time monitoring system as part of the infectious-disease surveillance. This strategy can serve as a model for worldwide surveillance and response to threats from infectious diseases.

Undernutrition is being rapidly reduced in India and China. In both countries the diet is shifting toward higher fat and lower carbohydrate content. Distinct features are high intakes of foods from animal sources and edible oils in China, and high intakes of dairy and added sugar in India. The proportion of overweight is increasing very rapidly in China among all adults; in India the shift is most pronounced among urban residents and high‐income rural residents. Hypertension and stroke are relatively higher in China and adult‐onset diabetes is relatively higher in India. Established economic techniques were used to measure and project the costs of undernutrition and diet‐related noncommunicable diseases in 1995 and 2025. Current WHO mortality projections of diet‐related noncommunicable diseases, dietary and body composition survey data, and national data sets of hospital costs for healthcare, are used for the economic analyses. In 1995, China's costs of undernutrition and costs of diet‐related noncommunicable diseases were of similar magnitude, but there will be a rapid increase in the costs and prevalence of diet‐related noncommunicable diseases by 2025. By contrast with China, India's costs of undernutrition will continue to decline, but undernutrition costs did surpass overnutrition diet‐related noncommunicable disease costs in 1995. India's rapid increase in diet‐related noncommunicable diseases and their costs projects similar economic costs of undernutrition and overnutrition by 2025.

Hepatitis B vaccine has been successfully integrated into routine infant immunization in China, now reaching most infants within 24 h after birth, and the prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen has been greatly reduced among children born after 1992.

China has already reached the national goal of reducing HBsAg prevalence to less than 1% among children under 5 years and has prevented an estimated 16-20 million HBV carriers through hepatitis B vaccination of infants. Immunization program should be further strengthened to reach those remaining at highest risk.

An epizootic in seawater-cage reared large yellow croaker, Larimichthys crocea, in China was caused by a Nocardia sp. from August to October 2003. The cumulative mortality rate was 15% and the diseased fish were 16 months old with individual length varying from 25 to 30 cm. Multiple, white nodules, 0.1-0.2 cm in diameter, were scattered on the heart, spleen and kidney. The morphology of isolated bacteria from Lowenstein-Jensen medium and tryptic soy agar was bead-like or long, slender, filamentous rods. Experimental infection indicated that the isolated bacterium was the pathogen responsible for the mortalities. A partial sequence of the 16S rRNA gene of the organism and the type strain of Nocardia seriolae JCM 3360T (Z36925) formed a monophyletic clade with a high sequence similarity of 99.9%. Based on the morphological, physiological, biological properties and the phylogenetic analysis, the pathogenic organism was identified as N. seriolae. This is the first report on N. seriolae-infected large yellow croaker in aquaculture.

Objective: To assess the health-related economic burden attributable to smoking in China for persons aged 35 and older. Methods: A prevalence-based, disease-specific approach was used to estimate the smoking attributable direct costs, indirect morbidity costs, and costs of premature deaths caused by smoking-related diseases. The primary data source was the 1998 China National Health Services Survey, which contains the smoking status, medical utilisation, and expenditures for 216 101 individuals. Results: The economic costs of smoking in 2000 amounted to $5.0 billion (measured in 2000, US$) in total and $25.43 per smoker (> age 35). The share of the economic costs was greater for men than women, and greater in rural areas than in urban areas. Of the $5.0 billion total costs, direct costs were $1.7 billion (34% of the total), indirect morbidity costs were $0.4 billion (8%), and indirect mortality costs were $2.9 billion (58%). The direct costs of smoking accounted for 3.1% of China's national health expenditures in 2000. Conclusion:The adverse health effects of smoking constitute a huge economic burden to the Chinese society. To reduce this burden in the future, effective tobacco control programmes and sustained efforts are needed to curb the tobacco epidemic and economic losses.

Further research is needed to determine the functional role of lymphatic vascular electrotaxis in vivo and to investigate possible applications, including stem cell maintenance (9). ConclusionsDirect-current electrical stimulation promoted both cytoskeleton extension of LECs via the FAK pathway and calcium influx, leading to induction of proliferation and migration of LECs to the cathode in vitro. Electric stimuli could be used to control lymphatic function and its related diseases. AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Suin Kyo for her technical assistance. K.K and Y.M designed, performed the research study and analysed the data. M.S, K.F, N.S and Y.M performed the research and analysed the data. K.K wrote the paper, Y.T and T.A contributed the development of DC application instrument for the study. Conflict of interestsThe authors have declared no conflicting interests. Supporting InformationAdditional supporting data may be found in the supplementary information of this article. Data S1. Complete materials and methods. Figure S1. Schematic illustration of DC application for migration assay of LECs. Abstract: S100A9 and S100A8 are called damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) molecules because of their proinflammatory properties. Few studies have evaluated S100A9 and S100A8 function as DAMP molecules in atopic dermatitis (AD). We investigated how house-dust mites affect S100A9 and S100A8 expression in Th2 cytokine-and Th17 cytokine-treated keratinocytes, and how secretion of these molecules affects keratinocyte-derived cytokines. Finally, we evaluated expression of these DAMP molecules in AD patients. S100A9 expression and S100A8 expression were strongly induced in IL-17A-and Dermatophagoides (D.) farinae-treated keratinocytes, respectively. Furthermore, co-treatment with D. farinae and IL-17A strongly increased expression of S100A9 and S100A8 compared with D. farinae-Th2 cytokine co-treatment. The IL-33 mRNA level increased in a dose-dependent manner in S100A9-treated keratinocytes, but TSLP expression did not change. S100A8/A9 levels were also higher in the lesional skin and serum of AD patients, and correlated with disease severity. Taken together, S100A9 and S100A8 may be involved in inducing DAMPmediated inflammation in AD triggered by IL-17A and house-dust mites.