BACKGROUND Transmission of infectious diseases is a recognized complication of blood transfusion and blood products. Nucleic acid testing (NAT) may contribute to improved efficiency of blood screening and thereby increase the safety margin for transfused blood. METHODS Unscreened blood samples from 1388 randomized donors were selected for this study at the Transfusion Medicine Unit of Hospita...

The New Aniseikonia Test (NAT), a hand-held direct-comparison test using red/green anaglyphs, has several potential advantages as a screener. We compared the validity of the NAT to that of the Space Eikonometer in three experiments: (1) aniseikonia was induced by calibrated size lenses in a double-blind study of 15 normal subjects; (2) habitual aniseikonia was measured with both instruments in ...

BACKGROUND The performance of the multiplex Procleix Ultrio Elite assay as individual donor nucleic acid test (ID-NAT) for the detection of HIV-1, HIV-2, HCV, and HBV was evaluated in a retrospective, single center study. METHODS ID-NAT results of 21,181 blood donors, 984 tissue donors, 293 hematopoietic stem cell donors and 4 organ donors were reviewed in synopsis with results of serological...

In December 2001 and 2002 in situ aerosol measurements were made from balloon-borne platforms within polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) which contained particles of supercooled ternary solution (STS), nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) and ice. Particle size (radius >0.15 µm) and number concentrations were measured with two optical particle counters. One of these included an ∼80 cm inlet heated to >244...

Experimental work over the past several years has revealed an unexpected abundance of long natural antisense transcripts (NATs) in eukaryotic species. In light of the proposed role of such RNA molecules in the regulation of gene expression in the brain, attention is now focused on specific examples of neuronal NATs. Of particular interest are NATs that are complementary to mRNAs encoding nitric...

BACKGROUND Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNB)-oriented stepwise treatment under local anesthesia has been performed in the outpatient-ambulatory setting in patients receiving neoadjuvant therapy (NAT). We retrospectively reviewed our preliminary experience of ambulatory SNB in breast cancer patients scheduled to undergo NAT to evaluate the usefulness and feasibility of this method as a minimally ...

Melatonin is a neurohormone that is produced not only by the pineal gland but also by several ocular structures. One of the main physiologic roles of melatonin is the reduction of intraocular pressure (IOP). Using both control C57BL/6J and glaucomatous DBA/2J mice as well as TonoLab tonometry, this study evaluated the effect of melatonin and 5-methoxycarbonylamino-N-acetyltryptamine (5-MCA-NAT)...

INTRODUCTION Previous studies have shown high residual risk of transfusing a blood donation contaminated by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) in Brazil and motivated the development of a Brazilian platform for simultaneous detection of both viruses by nucleic acid amplification test (NAT) denominated HIV/HCV Bio-Manguinhos/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ). The objecti...

Novel drugs to treat tuberculosis are required and the identification of potential targets is important. Piperidinols have been identified as potential antimycobacterial agents (MIC < 5 μg/mL), which also inhibit mycobacterial arylamine N-acetyltransferase (NAT), an enzyme essential for mycobacterial survival inside macrophages. The NAT inhibition involves a prodrug-like mechanism in which acti...