The specificity of nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) used for early infant diagnosis (EID) of HIV infection is <100%, leading some HIV-uninfected infants to be incorrectly identified as HIV-infected. The World Health Organization recommends that infants undergo a second NAAT to confirm any positive test result, but implementation is limited. Our objective was to determine the impact and cost-effectiveness of confirmatory HIV testing for EID programmes in South Africa.

The WHO Global Ministerial Conference “Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response” aims to accelerate implementation of the WHO End TB Strategy - with immediate action addressing gaps in access to care and the MDR-TB crisis - in order to reach the End TB targets set by the World Health Assembly and the United Nations

Approaches used to early and accurately characterize epidemiologic patterns of disease incidence in a temporal and spatial series are becoming increasingly important. Cluster tests are generally designed for retrospective detection of epidemiologic anomalies in a temporal or space-time series. Timely identification of anomalies of disease or poisoning incidence during ongoing surveillance or an outbreak requires the use of sensitive statistical methods that recognize an incidence pattern at the time of occurrence.

This report focuses on what is now the single biggest cause of child deaths through infectious disease. Pneumonia is a disease of poverty. Fatalities are concentrated in the world’s poorest countries. Within those countries it is the poorest and most disadvantaged children who face the greatest risks.

The relatively high incidence of cervical cancer in women at older ages is a continuing concern in countries with long-established cervical screening. Controversy remains on when and how to cease screening. Existing population-based studies on the effectiveness of cervical screening at older ages have not considered women’s screening history. We performed a nationwide cohort study to investigate the incidence of cervical cancer after age 60 years and its association with cervical screening at age 61–65, stratified by screening history at age 51–60.

Nucleic acid amplification testing (NAT) is restricted to a few blood banks in India since 2008. This review was directed toward understanding NAT yield in different parts of the country and prevalence in the NAT of different types of virus. Materials and Methods: English literature was searched from 1990 to 2016 in PubMed, Scopus, Ind med, and Google database using properly constructed key words. Literature was collected and finally the data were synthesized.

The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of introducing a rapid test as the first-line diagnostic test for drug-sensitive tuberculosis in Cape Town, South Africa.

Original Source

Cathepsin L (CTSL) and B (CTSB) have a crucial role in extracellular matrix (ECM) degradation and tissue remodeling, which is a prominent feature of fibrogenesis. The aim of this study was to determine the role and clinical significance of these cathepsins in liver fibrosis.

Original Source

A rare disease is a health condition of particularly low prevalence that affects a small number of people compared with other prevalent diseases in the general population.

An Article by Audrey Bonaventure and colleagues in the Lancet Haematology provides international comparisons of 5-year net survival statistics of children diagnosed with leukaemia, and another Article by Eva Steliarova-Foucher and colleagues in the Lancet Oncology is an exhaustive report on worldwide incidence rates of childhood cancers observed in 2001–10. Both are based on best-quality data from population-based cancer registries. The first Article by Bonaventure and colleagues1 documents the steady improvements in survival in children with leukaemia from 1995–2009.

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