BACKGROUND Paying for health care may exclude poor people. Burkina Faso adopted the DOTS strategy implementing "free care" for Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment. This should increase universal health coverage and help to overcome social and economic barriers to health access. METHODS Straddling 2007 and 2008, in-depth interviews were conducted over a year among smear-positive pulmonar...

OBJECTIVE To report a rare side effect of metformin, an oral antidiabetic drug that is used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. CLINICAL PRESENTATION AND INTERVENTION A 17-year-old boy was hospitalized for receiving acute lymphoblastic leukemia treatment that was composed of vincristine, L-asparaginase, daunorubicin, and prednisone. Hyperglycemia was determined without any clinical...

Direct Coombs’ tests (antiglobulin all of the methadone maintenance patests) were performed on blood from tients were, in fact, taking methadone, 103 opiate users prior to methadone as well as other drugs. This result maintenance therapy and 67 loncj-term conflicts with a report in which 85#{176}/o methadone maintenance patients. No of the methadone maintenance papositive tests were observed in...

The phenomenon of conglutination was first reported by Ehrlich and Sachs (1902), and subsequently received attention from Bordet and Gay (1906) and Bordet and Streng (1909). However, a systematic study of the mechanisms involved did not appear until Coombs and associates, in a commendable series of papers, reviewed the earlier work (Hole and Coombs, 1947a), applied the test to certain virus sys...

Enzyme linked and agglutination direct antiglobulin tests were carried out on blood samples from 219 patients suspected of having autoimmune haemolysis. The enzyme linked tests were more sensitive: they could detect the small amounts of IgG, IgA, and IgM which are normally present on red cells and showed increased amounts of cell bound immunoglobulins in patients with Coombs test negative autoi...

Rh isoimmunisation leads to haemolytic anaemia and hyperbilirubinaemia in the first h of life. Isolated early onset neonatal anaemia has rarely been reported. The authors describe the case of a term infant, born to an 'A' negative, second gravida mother. On the second day of life, pallor was noticed. His haemoglobin (Hb) was 6.8 g/dl, he had reticulocytosis and a positive direct antiglobulin te...

Passive haemagglutination inhibition (PHI) was adapted to quantitate red cell associated IgG. Twenty one patients with autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) had a raised red cell associated IgG, mean (SD) = 5.783 (6.183) ng/10(6) red blood cell compared with that of 69 subjects with a red cell associated IgG of 0.433 (0.349) ng/10(6) red blood cell. Thirteen of 14 blood donors with a positive di...

Enzyme linked and radioimmune direct antiglobulin tests (DAGTs) were used to assess red cell bound IgG, IgA, and IgM in 585 patients referred to an immunohaematology reference centre. One hundred and fifty eight patients with less than or equal to 200 mol IgG and small amounts of IgA and IgM coating their red cells were studied in detail. The presence of autoimmune haemolysis was determined fro...

We evaluated the clinical usefulness of simultaneous LISS/Coombs and NaCl/Enzyme testing using the gel method for screening and identification of unexpected antibodies in 15,014 samples. When unexpected antibodies were detected by either screening test, those antibodies were identified using both the LISS/Coombs and the NaCl/Enzyme gel test. The positive screening rates of the LISS/Coombs, NaCl...

Background: Paroxysmal cold hemoglobinuria (PCH), an autoimmune hemolytic anaemia caused due to polyclonal IgG anti-P autoantibody binding to red blood cell surface antigens and is characterized by hemoglobinuria, typically after exposure to cold temperatures. Case Presentation: An 84-year-old female patient started developing breathing difficulty off and on with generalised weakness and loss o...