BACKGROUND Human T cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-I) can cause tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1 associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM) and adult T cell leukaemia/lymphoma. More recently other diseases such as isolated peripheral polyneuropathy, myopathy, artropathy, and uveitis have been associated with this retrovirus. Only a few uncontrolled studies, without necessary exclusion criteria, ha...

Human amniotic membrane (HAM) has been used as a biomaterial in various surgical procedures and exceeds some qualities of common materials. We evaluated HAM as wound dressing for split-thickness skin-graft (STSG) donor sites in a swine model (Part A) and a clinical trial (Part B). Part A: STSG donor sites in 4 piglets were treated with HAM or a clinically used conventional polyurethane (PU) foi...

Listeria monocytogenes has been implicated in several listeriosis outbreaks linked to the consumption of presliced ready-to-eat (RTE) deli meats. The possible contamination of sliced RTE meats by L. monocytogenes during the slicing process has become a public health concern. The objectives of this study were to investigate the transfer phenomena of L. monocytogenes between a meat slicer and ham...

Human amniotic membrane (HAM) is a useful biological material for the reconstruction of damaged ocular surface. The processing and preservation of HAM is critical to prevent the patients undergoing amniotic membrane transplant (AMT) from cross infections. For HAM preparation human placenta is obtained after an elective cesarean delivery. Before collection, the donor is screened for seronegativi...

BACKGROUND The 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D 17) remains the 'gold standard' for measuring treatment outcomes in clinical trials of depressed patients. The Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), Clinical Global Impressions-Severity (CGI-S) and -Improvement (CGI-I) scales are also widely used. OBJECTIVE This analysis of data from 22 double-blind, placebo-controlle...

In order to examine the effect of HTLV-I proviral load on the pathogenesis of HAM/TSP, we measured the HTLV-I proviral load in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from a large number of HAM/TSP patients and asymptomatic HTLV-I carriers. To measure the proviral load, we used an accurate and reproducible quantitative PCR method using a dual-labeled fluorogenic probe (ABI PRISM 7700 Sequence...

HTLV-I-specific CD8(+) T cells have been characterized with high frequencies in peripheral blood and cerebrospinal fluid and production of proinflammatory cytokines, which contribute to central nervous system inflammation in HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). However, little is known about the differences in CD8(+) T cell activation status between asymptomatic ...

the introduction of the new classification systems of psychiatric disorders (ICD-10 and DSM-IV) two decades ago it became impossible to distinguish between primary and secondary (stress-related) depression 1. The stimulus-response models for both PTSD (one single, severe life event) and for exhaustion depression (multiple distressing life events) are placed within the anxiety disorders in the I...

in this work, the blasius equation is studied. homotopy perturbation method (hpm) and homotopy analysis method (ham) are applied to obtain its solution. comparison with variational iteration method (vim) is made to highlight the significant features of employed methods and their capability of handling nonlinear problems. the outcome shows the success of (hpm) and (ham) for solving nonlinear pro...