BACKGROUND Syphilis is still a public health problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. Therefore maternal screening is of great importance for public health. AIM To estimate the prevalence of maternal syphilis and to evaluate a rapid diagnostic test for the disease among Bolivian women. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 489 women delivering in a Public Hospital in Cochabamba, Bolivia, answe...

Leishmaniasis remains one of the world's most neglected diseases, and early detection of the infectious agent, especially in developing countries, will require a simple and rapid test. In this study, we established a quick, one-step, single-tube, highly sensitive loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay for rapid detection of Leishmania DNA from tissue materials spotted on an FTA car...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a widely used method for analyzing a system’s failure logic and calculating overall reliability. However, application of conventional FTA has some shortcomings, e.g. in handling the uncertainties, allowing the use of linguistic variables, and integrating human error in failure logic model. Hence, Fuzzy set theory has been proposed to overcome the limitation of conve...

The ability to archive biological samples for subsequent nucleic acid analysis is essential for tissue specimens and forensic samples. FTA Card is a chemically treated filter paper designed for the collection and room temperature storage of biological samples for subsequent DNA analysis. Its usefulness for the preservation of biological samples for subsequent RNA analysis was tested. Here, we d...

Outpatient departments lie at a critical interface between primary care and acute services. Increasing pressure to ensure efficient and effective health care delivery has resulted in outpatient departments investigating ways to minimise the number of patients failing to attend their scheduled clinic appointments. Failure to attend (FTA) is an expensive and persistent problem worldwide with rate...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the compensatory correlation between knee and hindfoot in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This cross-sectional study included 218 patients (407 lower extremities). Radiographs of the hindfoot and full-length posteroanterior hip-to-calcaneus standing radiographs were evaluated. The destruction of the hindfoot was evaluated using the Larsen gra...

In the present study, a methodology for determining the factors affecting fuel consumption variation in tractors is proposed using the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) technique. The mechanical system of a rear traction tractor is modeled and the parameters responsible for the tractor performance are emphasized. From the definition of such parameters (for example: rear weight dynamic, slip, dynamic we...

Growing evidence that certain poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are associated with negative human health effects prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue lifetime drinking water health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in 2016. Given that groundwater is a major source of drinking water, the main objective of this work ...

Accurate diagnosis of thyroid tumors is challenging. A particular problem is distinguishing between follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) and benign follicular thyroid adenoma (FTA), where histology of fine-needle aspirates is not conclusive. It is often necessary to remove healthy thyroid to rule out carcinoma. In order to find markers to improve diagnosis, we quantified gene transcript expressio...