The Journal of infectious diseases
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The timely evaluation of new drugs that can be used to shorten tuberculosis (TB) treatment will require surrogate markers for relapse. This study examined bactericidal activity against intracellular Mycobacterium tuberculosis in whole blood culture (whole blood bactericidal activity; WBA) during TB treatment. ⋯ Cumulative WBA throughout treatment was greater in subjects whose sputum cultures converted to negative by the eighth week of treatment than in those for whom conversion was delayed (mean, -365 vs. -250 log(10) cfu-days; P=.04) and correlated with the rate of decrease of sputum colony-forming unit counts during the first 4 weeks of treatment (P=.018), both of which are indicative of prognosis. These findings indicate that measurement of WBA may have a role in assessing the sterilizing activity of new anti-TB drugs.
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Baseline serum samples from 2815 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive and 963 HIV-negative women enrolled in 2 cohort studies were tested for immunoglobulin G antibodies to human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) capsids. HPV-16 seropositivity was associated with lifetime number of sex partners (P<.001) among both HIV-positive and HIV-negative women. Approximately 50%-60% of HPV-16 DNA-positive women were HPV-16 positive. ⋯ Thus, the high seroprevalence of HPV-16 among HIV-positive women may be explained by a high prevalence of HPV of all types. Approximately 50% of HIV-positive women had serological evidence of prior HPV-16 infection, but only approximately 5% had an HPV-16 cervical infection at baseline. Despite the higher prevalence of HPV infection in this group, most HIV-positive women are able to control HPV-16 replication at the cervix, and reactivation, if it occurs, is not very common.