INTRODUCTION The Prevention of Mother to Child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, an important intervention in the fight against HIV/AIDS can only be of benefit if the HIV status of the mother is known. Unfortunately, some women receive HIV counseling and testing (HCT) during the window period or prior to new infection in pregnancy and therefore, miss-out on the gains of PMTCT. A repeat HIV test woul...

BACKGROUND Total CD4 T-cell counts predict HIV disease progression but do not necessarily reflect normalization of immune function. CD4/CD8 ratio is a marker of immune dysfunction, a prognostic indicator for non-AIDS mortality, and reflects viral reservoir size. Despite antiretroviral therapy (ART), recovery of CD4/CD8 ratio in chronic HIV infection is incomplete; we hypothesize enhanced CD4/CD...

OBJECTIVES After Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan in 2009, thousands of Taiwanese citizens were displaced to shelters for several weeks. Others were placed in urban communities where they had family members. This study aimed to investigate serological status in both groups and identify risk factors associated with seroconversion of infectious diseases. DESIGN A longitudinal survey. SETTING All...

BACKGROUND Because of established links between entrenched poverty and risk of HIV infection, there have long been warnings that HIV/AIDS will disproportionately affect Aboriginal people in Canada. We compared HIV incidence rates among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal injection drug users (IDUs) in Vancouver and studied factors associated with HIV seroconversion among Aboriginal participants. ME...

It have been suggested that hepatitis B virus (HBV) pre-S deletions may play a role in hepatocarcinogenesis. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of pre-S deletions in chronic hepatitis B patients in Hong Kong, the factors associated with the deletions and its relationship with hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) seroconversion. HBV pre-S deletions were determined by nucleotide sequen...

PURPOSE To detect seroconversion of hepatitis B vaccine and antibody waning 3 years after vaccination in children immunized according to the World Health Organization schedule and its relationship to the mother's serostatus during pregnancy. METHODS A serological study was carried out in São José dos Campos. Blood samples from pregnant women were taken for hepatitis B marker serology. To eval...

BACKGROUND Hemovigilance is an organized system of surveillance throughout the transfusion chain intended to evaluate information in order to prevent the appearance or recurrence of adverse reactions related to the use of blood products. OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were to assess the late reporting of incidents related to possible seroconversion in respect to age, marital status and ethn...

INTRODUCTION The ARCHITECT Anti-HCV assay is a fully automated high throughput chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay (CMIA) for the detection of antibodies to structural and nonstructural proteins of the hepatitis C virus (HCV). To further enhance the performance of this test, the assay was modified to improve the specificity for blood donor specimens. METHODS The specificity of the enha...

The aim of the current study was to evaluate viral suppression following combined treatment with an S/pre-S1/pre-S2 vaccine and lamivudine in patients with chronic hepatitis B. We established a randomized, controlled clinical trial to compare the responses of three different treatment groups: those receiving vaccine monotherapy, lamivudine monotherapy, or combination treatment. Viral response w...

INTRODUCTION High rates of hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission are found in samples of people who inject drugs (PWID) throughout the world. The objective of this paper was to meta-analyze the effects of risk-reduction interventions on HCV seroconversion and identify the most effective intervention types. METHODS We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of published and unpublished ...