Plos One
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At least 36 countries are suffering from severe shortages of healthcare workers and this crisis of human resources in developing countries is a major obstacle to scale-up of HIV care. We performed a case study to evaluate a health service delivery model where a task-shifting approach to HIV care had been undertaken with tasks shifted from doctors to nurses and community health workers in rural Haiti. ⋯ Task-shifting using a community-based, nurse-centered model of HIV care in rural Haiti is an effective model for scale-up of HIV services with good clinical and program outcomes. Community health workers can provide essential health services that are otherwise unavailable particularly in rural, poor areas.
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Information on treatment outcomes among hospitalized patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) are scarce in China. ⋯ While overall satisfactory treatment success for non-MDR-TB patients was achieved, more intensive efforts should be made to better manage MDR- and XDR-TB cases in order to improve their treatment outcomes and to minimize further emergence of so-called totally drug-resistant TB cases.
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Viral hepatitis B, C and delta still remain a serious problem worldwide. In Colombia, data from 1980s described that HBV and HDV infection are important causes of hepatitis, but little is known about HCV infection. The aim of this study was to determine the currently frequency of HBV, HCV and HDV in four different Colombian regions. ⋯ In conclusion, HBV, HCV and HDV infections are detected throughout Colombia in frequency levels that would place some areas as hyperendemic for HBV, especially those found in Amazonas and Magdalena departments. Novel strategies to increase HBV immunization in the rural population and to strengthen HCV surveillance are reinforced by these results.
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Gliosarcoma is one of the most common malignant brain tumors, and anti-angiogenesis is a promising approach for the treatment of gliosarcoma. However, chemotherapy is obstructed by the physical obstacle formed by the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB). Honokiol has been known to possess potent activities in the central nervous system diseases, and anti-angiogenic and anti-tumor properties. Here, we hypothesized that honokiol could cross the BBB and BCSFB for the treatment of gliosarcoma. ⋯ This study provided the first evidence that honokiol could effectively cross BBB and BCSFB and inhibit brain tumor growth in rat 9L intracerebral gliosarcoma model and human U251 xenograft glioma model. It suggested a significant strategy for offering a potential new therapy for the treatment of gliosarcoma.
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Alternative splicing creates several Na(v)1.5 transcripts in the mammalian myocardium and in various other tissues including brain, dorsal root ganglia, breast cancer cells as well as neuronal stem cell lines. In total nine Na(v)1.5 splice variants have been discovered. Four of them, namely Na(v)1.5a, Na(v)1.5c, Na(v)1.5d, and Na(v)1.5e, generate functional channels in heterologous expression systems. ⋯ In case of hNa(v)1.5e, the neonatal variant of hNa(v)1.5, both the splice variant itself as well as the corresponding mutant channel showed electrophysiological properties that were distinct from the wild-type and mutant reference channels, hNa(v)1.5 and T1620K, respectively. In conclusion, our data show that alternative splicing is a mechanism capable of generating a variety of functionally distinct wild-type and mutant hNa(v)1.5 channels. Thus, the cellular splicing machinery is a potential player affecting genotype-phenotype correlations in SCN5A channelopathies.