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STUDY OBJECTIVES We conducted a retrospective study on patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and evaluated the incidence and prevalence of Chlamydia pneumoniae infection. METHODS Sixty-one consecutive patients with AMI aged younger than 65 years were enrolled. Within 24 h of hospital admission, serum samples and pharyngeal swab specimens were obtained from all patients. In 49 of 61 ...

Cirrhosis and chronic liver failure are leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States, with the majority of preventable cases attributed to excessive alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis, or nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Cirrhosis often is an indolent disease; most patients remain asymptomatic until the occurrence of decompensation, characterized by ascites, spontaneous bac...

conclusions: it was concluded that the elisa is a suitable method for large scale screening of antibodies against aspergilloma. the easy techniques have shortened the required time of tests (approximately 1.30 hours for our elisa, as opposed to 2.30 hours with commercial elisa kit). this may be a substantial benefit for large numbers of samples that should be tested. materials and methods: an i...

  Background and Objective: Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder, characterized by inflammation, villous atrophy, and crypt hyperplasia of the small bowel mucosa. In this study we considered and compared sensitivity and specificity of serological tests in patients with celiac disease. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study we prospectively recruited children with suspected c...

HIV rapid testing may enhance the effectiveness of a mobile HIV/sexually transmitted disease (STD) screening clinic in at-risk populations who normally do not seek care. Our goal was to determine the usability and post-test counseling rates of rapid HIV testing services for clients tested on a mobile clinic. HIV Oraquick rapid HIV-1 testing (OraSure Technologies, Inc., Bethlehem, PA) (blood) wa...

BACKGROUND There are no published reports on studies comparing itraconazole (ITC), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (cotrimoxazole, CMX), and ITC followed by CMX (ITC/CMX) in the treatment of paracoccidiodomycosis. This study aimed to compare the efficacy, effectiveness, safety and time to clinical and serologic cure in paracoccidioidomycosis patients treated with ITC or CMX, the antifungal agents...

In a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Ryan et al. (6) reported antileishmanial serologic data based on soluble antigens from promastigotes cultivated in a proteinfree medium. Using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), it was possible to detect immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG antibody in patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis (143 sera) and visceral leishmaniasis (12...

The potential association of microcephaly and other congenital abnormalities with Zika virus (ZIKV) infection during pregnancy underlines the critical need for a rapid and accurate diagnosis. Due to the short duration of ZIKV viremia in infected patients, a serologic assay that detects antibody responses to viral infection plays an essential role in diagnosing patient specimens. The current ser...