Plos One
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In light of the limitations of the current case finding strategies and the global urgency to improve tuberculosis (TB) case-detection, a renewed interest in active case finding (ACF) has risen. The WHO calls for more evidence on innovative ways of TB screening, especially from low-income countries, to inform global guideline development. We aimed to assess the feasibility of community-based ACF for TB among the urban poor in Cambodia and determine its impact on case detection, treatment uptake and outcome. ⋯ Our findings suggest that among the urban poor ACF for TB, using a sensitive symptom screen followed by smear-microscopy and targeted Xpert, contributed to improved case detection of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB, shortening the diagnostic delay, and successfully bringing patients into care.
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To explore the relationship of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components with age-related cataract in a representative Korean population. ⋯ Our results suggest that MetS and its components appear to be associated with age-related cataract only among Korean women, especially in nuclear cataract.
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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a risk factor for lung cancer. Migration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) into the blood stream is an early event that occurs during carcinogenesis. We aimed to examine the presence of CTCs in complement to CT-scan in COPD patients without clinically detectable lung cancer as a first step to identify a new marker for early lung cancer diagnosis. ⋯ No CTCs were detected in control smoking and non-smoking healthy individuals. CTCs can be detected in patients with COPD without clinically detectable lung cancer. Monitoring "sentinel" CTC-positive COPD patients may allow early diagnosis of lung cancer.
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Mutations in the bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 (BMPR2) gene can lead to hereditary pulmonary arterial hypertension (HPAH) and are detected in more than 80% of cases with familial aggregation of the disease. Factors determining disease penetrance are largely unknown. ⋯ This is the first report of an intronic BMPR2 mutation due to an Alu element insertion causing HPAH in a large family which has been confirmed on RNA-level. Only those members that carried both hypertensive response and the mutation developed manifest HPAH during follow-up. Our findings highlight the importance of including further methods such as RNA analysis into the molecular genetic diagnostic of PAH patients. They suggest that at least in some families hypertensive response may be an additional risk factor for disease manifestation and penetrance.
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A brand name can be considered a mental category. Similarity-based categorization theory has been used to explain how consumers judge a new product as a member of a known brand, a process called brand extension evaluation. This study was an event-related potential study conducted in two experiments. ⋯ In experiment 2, a prime-probe paradigm with a related task was used, in which product names included subcategory and major-category product names. The N400 elicited by subcategory products was more significantly negative than that elicited by major-category products, with no salient difference in P2. We speculated that P2 could reflect the early low-level and similarity-based processing in the first stage, whereas N400 could reflect the late analytic and category-based processing in the second stage.