Vaccination has been one of the most important interventions in disease prevention and control. The impact of vaccination largely depends on the quality and suitability of the chosen vaccine. To determine the suitability of a vaccine strain, antigenic matching is usually studied by in vitro analysis. In this study, we performed three in vitro test methods to determine which one gives the lowest...

Enterococcus faecalis represents recently an important etiological agent of health care-associated infections (HAIs) and there is a need for evaluation and comparison of typing methods available for this microorganism. We tested multilocus VNTR (variable-number tandem repeats) analysis (MLVA) on a well-characterized collection of 153 clinical isolates of E. faecalis, corresponding to 52 multilo...

Salmonellosis caused by enteropathogens of the genus Salmonella is a major public health concern in Australia. Serotyping is usually performed in enteric reference laboratories for the initial characterisation and differentiation of Salmonella species. Further strain identification within serovars may be achieved by phage typing and this is used as an epidemiological tool for outbreak investiga...

A commonly used procedure for reduction of the number of variables in the linear discriminant analysis is the stepwise method for variable selection. Although often criticized, when used carefully, this method can be a useful prelude to a further analysis. The contribution of a variable to the discriminatory power of the model is usually measured by the maximum likelihood ratio criterion, reffe...

It is proposed that if the spirogram is truncated for moment analysis, this should be done with respect to volume and not time. Errors are incurred when the moments of one spirogram are compared with those of another. These errors are maximal with no truncation and are reduced by truncation. A method is described for deriving sequential truncated moments of the forced expiratory spirogram. The ...

OBJECTIVE To understand experiences of discrimination lived by undergraduate students and to analyze their applicability to the construction of a Brazilian discrimination scale. METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES In a qualitative study five focus groups were conducted with 43 university students from the city of Rio de Janeiro, Southeastern Brazil, in 2008. Students from undergraduate courses with dif...

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in patients with advanced renal disease. The objective of this study was to investigate impairments in heart rhythm complexity in patients with end-stage renal disease. We prospectively analyzed 65 patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis (PD) without prior cardiovascular disease and 72 individuals with normal renal function as the con...

This study aimed to test the predictive performance of the updated ACTION, GRACE, and CADILLAC risk scores (RS's) for long-term mortality in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The study included individuals from 2 independent cohorts: derivation cohort (N = 1901) and validation cohort (N = 728). From the derivation cohort, we use...

In situations where the skeletal remains found are too fragmented, it is necessary to assess the human origin of such remains; for this purpose, various parameters are used, both anatomical and histological. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the various histomorphometric parameters to differentiate human from non-human bones, to further construct discriminatory functions that al...

The spirochete Brachyspira hyodysenteriae is the causative agent of swine dysentery, a severe colonic infection of pigs that has a considerable economic impact in many swine-producing countries. In spite of its importance, knowledge about the global epidemiology and population structure of B. hyodysenteriae is limited. Progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of a low-cost, portable,...