The global scale-up of antiretroviral treatment in past years has, unfortunately, not been accompanied by adequate strengthening of laboratory capacity. Monitoring of treatment with HIV viral load and resistance testing, as recommended in industrialized countries, is rarely available in resource-limited settings due to high costs and stringent requirements for storage and transport of plasma. C...

(1) In Section 2, we define the notion of harmonic maps and quadratic differentials. Then we give a harmonic map proof of Teichmuller’s theorem by Wolf. (See [2], [9]) (2) In Section 3, we explain a compactification of Teichmuller spaces by Wolf using harmonic maps. (See [2], [4], [10], [11]) (3) In Section 4, we review the Morgan-Shalen compactification and the Korevaar-Schoen limit. Then we g...

BACKGROUND Diseases with an onset during childhood or adult life can have their origin during fetal life or at birth. Neonatal blood dried on filter paper (Guthrie cards) collected for screening purposes is routinely stored for decades. In addition to clinical use, these filters in combination with patient registers constitute an invaluable resource for epidemiological and pathophysiological re...

BACKGROUND State laws in the USA mandate that blood be drawn from all newborn infants to screen for health-threatening conditions. These screening assays consume only a small portion of the blood samples, which are collected on filter paper ('Guthrie') cards. Many states archive unused blood spots, often in unrefrigerated storage. OBJECTIVES While individual RNA transcripts have been identifi...

BACKGROUND Data on knowledge, attitudes, behaviour and practices (KABP) of persons with recent HIV infection compared to controls with negative HIV test result provide information on current risk patterns and can help to re-focus HIV prevention strategies. METHODS From March 2008 through May 2010, persons newly diagnosed with HIV (cases) and HIV-negative controls were recruited by physicians ...

We present a method for the determination of blood glucose using dried filter paper blood spots. To validate this method, we compared our results using filter paper and simultaneously collected venous blood. We demonstrated that there is a linear relationship between the filter paper glucose levels and those determined in whole blood (r = 0.98). There was no significant difference between the r...

BACKGROUND Glycated hemoglobin A1c (A1C) is an important marker in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes. Dried blood measurement of A1C is useful in large scale epidemiological evaluation of A1C, especially to assess the impact of intervention programs. The possibility of using dried blood for measurement of A1C by the immunoturbidimetric method was explored in the present study. METHOD Bl...

Research indicates that praying for others may offset the effects of stress on self-rated health and psychological well-being. The purpose of the current study is to extend this literature by seeing whether praying for others moderates the effects of exposure to lifetime trauma on a key marker of inflammation: C-reactive protein. The data come from a recent nationwide survey of adults of all ag...

We compared a DNA-based assay with a total nucleic acid-based assay for early detection of infant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The codetection of DNA and RNA did not result in an overall higher sensitivity compared to that of DNA alone. Discordant results were associated with low levels of HIV DNA, indicating that the sample amount may be critical.