Meningococcal meningitis outbreaks occur every year during the dry season in the "meningitis belt" of sub-Saharan Africa. Identification of the causative strain is crucial before launching mass vaccination campaigns, to assure use of the correct vaccine. Rapid agglutination (latex) tests are most commonly available in district-level laboratories at the beginning of the epidemic season; limitati...

Usually, t-ary trees are encoded to integer sequences as their representation. It has been shown that the right-distance sequences (or RD-sequence for short) are concise representations of t-ary trees and are suitable for the usage of loopless Gray-code enumeration. For n, t 2, the RD-representation graph, denoted as RDt n, is a graph whose vertices are the RD-sequences of t-ary trees with n in...

BACKGROUND Yaws is a non-venereal treponemal infection caused by Treponema pallidum subspecies pertenue. The disease is targeted by WHO for eradication by 2020. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are envisaged for confirmation of clinical cases during treatment campaigns and for certification of the interruption of transmission. Yaws testing requires both treponemal (trep) and non-treponemal (non-tr...

The chapter is a systematic literature review of fundamental theories about small and medium business (SME) success. examines how they specifically impact digital SMEs. examined six theories: dynamic capability view (DCV), composition-based firm growth (CBV), resource-based (RBV), resource dependence theory (RDT), upper echelon (UET), strategic contingency (SCT). results showed that RBV, DCV, U...

Madagascar is the country that reports most cases of plague in world. This an evaluation study diagnosis over a 2-year period from January 2017 to December 2018. For all suspected cases, peripheral RDT (performed locally), central laboratory) and PCR were performed. Parameters diagnostic tests used, year study, performance concordance between studied. 2981 collected, 21.6% confirmed, 28.4% prob...

BACKGROUND Successful scale-up in the use of malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) requires that patients accept testing and treatment based on RDT results and that healthcare providers treat according to test results. Patient-provider communication is a key component of quality care, and leads to improved patient satisfaction, higher adherence to treatment and better health outcomes. Voiced or...

BACKGROUND Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Rapid diagnostic Test (RDT) kits are the preferred assays for HIV testing in many countries. Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission, Know Your Status Campaigns, Blood-Safety, Voluntary Counseling and Testing are major strategies adapted to control transmission of the virus and the pivot of these interventions is either screening or diagnosing in...

Introduction: The introduction of P. falciparum encoded HRP-2 based malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) kits is widely accepted in Nigeria and worldwide as a simplified form diagnosis cheaper alternative to the microscopy technique (gold standard). However, deletion Pfhrp2 gene contributes false negative results large number such deletions has been reported advanced countries thereby highlighti...

Abstract In the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic there has been an increase use antigen-detection rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDT). The performance Ag-RDT vary greatly between manufacturers and evaluating their analytical limit detection (LOD) become high priority. Here we describe a manufacturer-independent evaluation LOD 19 marketed using live SARS-CoV-2 spiked in differ...

High levels of anti-dengue IgM or IgG can be detected using numerous rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). However, the sensitivity and specificity of these tests are reduced by changes in envelope glycoprotein antigenicity that inevitably occur in limited expression systems. A novel RDT was designed to enhance diagnostic sensitivity. Dengue viruses cultured in animal cells were used as antigens to re...