PLoS medicine
-
Multicenter Study
Determinants of treatment adherence among smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients in Southern Ethiopia.
Defaulting from treatment remains a challenge for most tuberculosis control programmes. It may increase the risk of drug resistance, relapse, death, and prolonged infectiousness. The aim of this study was to determine factors predicting treatment adherence among smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients. ⋯ Defaulting due to treatment noncompletion in this study setting is high, and the main determinants appear to be factors related to physical access to a treatment centre. The continuation phase of treatment is the most crucial time for treatment interruption, and future interventions should take this factor into consideration.
-
Multicenter Study
Determinants of disease presentation and outcome during cryptococcosis: the CryptoA/D study.
Cryptococcosis is a life-threatening opportunistic fungal infection in both HIV-positive and -negative patients. Information on clinical presentation and therapeutic guidelines, derived mostly from clinical trials performed before introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy in patients with cryptococcal meningoencephalitis, is missing data on extrameningeal involvement and infections by serotype D as opposed to serotype A of Cryptococcus neoformans. ⋯ Thus sex, HIV status, and infecting serotype are major determinants of presentation and outcome during cryptococcosis. We propose a modification of current guidelines for the initial management of cryptococcosis based on systematic fungal burden evaluation.
-
Data exclusivity, the granting of exclusive rights over the data required for registration of pharmaceuticals, can jeopardize access to medicines and public health.
-
While the authors agree with John Ioannidis that "most research findings are false," here they show that replication of research findings enhances the positive predictive value of research findings being true.
-
A pandemic H5N1 influenza outbreak would be facilitated by an absence of immunity to the avian-derived virus in the human population. Although this condition is likely in regard to hemagglutinin-mediated immunity, the neuraminidase (NA) of H5N1 viruses (avN1) and of endemic human H1N1 viruses (huN1) are classified in the same serotype. We hypothesized that an immune response to huN1 could mediate cross-protection against H5N1 influenza virus infection. ⋯ These data reveal that humoral immunity elicited by huN1 can partially protect against H5N1 infection in a mammalian host. Our results suggest that a portion of the human population could have some degree of resistance to H5N1 influenza, with the possibility that this could be induced or enhanced through immunization with seasonal influenza vaccines.