| 1. |
- Do, Nga T. T., et al.
(författare)
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Community-based antibiotic access and use in six low-income and middle-income countries: a mixed-method approach
- 2021
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Ingår i: The Lancet Global Health. - : Elsevier. - 2214-109X. ; 9:5, s. e610-e619
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Antimicrobial misuse is common in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), and this practice is a driver of antibiotic resistance. We compared community-based antibiotic access and use practices across communities in LMICs to identify contextually specific targets for interventions to improve antibiotic use practices.Methods: We did quantitative and qualitative assessments of antibiotic access and use in six LMICs across Africa (Mozambique, Ghana, and South Africa) and Asia (Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand) over a 2·5-year study period (July 1, 2016–Dec 31, 2018). We did quantitative assessments of community antibiotic access and use through supplier mapping, customer exit interviews, and household surveys. These quantitative assessments were triangulated with qualitative drug supplier and consumer interviews and discussions.Findings: Vietnam and Bangladesh had the largest proportions of non-licensed antibiotic dispensing points. For mild illness, drug stores were the most common point of contact when seeking antibiotics in most countries, except South Africa and Mozambique, where public facilities were most common. Self-medication with antibiotics was found to be widespread in Vietnam (55·2% of antibiotics dispensed without prescription), Bangladesh (45·7%), and Ghana (36·1%), but less so in Mozambique (8·0%), South Africa (1·2%), and Thailand (3·9%). Self-medication was considered to be less time consuming, cheaper, and overall, more convenient than accessing them through health-care facilities. Factors determining where treatment was sought often involved relevant policies, trust in the supplier and the drug, disease severity, and whether the antibiotic was intended for a child. Confusion regarding how to identify oral antibiotics was revealed in both Africa and Asia.Interpretation: Contextual complexities and differences between countries with different incomes, policy frameworks, and cultural norms were revealed. These contextual differences render a single strategy inadequate and instead necessitate context-tailored, integrated intervention packages to improve antibiotic use in LMICs as part of global efforts to combat antibiotic resistance.
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| 3. |
- Lunner, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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A crosscultural examination of weight-related teasing, body imagem and eating disturbance in Swedish and Australian samples.
- 2000
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Ingår i: International Journal of Eating Disorders. - 0276-3478 .- 1098-108X. ; 28:4, s. 430-435
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: To evaluate, cross-culturally, a model for the prediction of eating disturbance from factors such as body image disturbance, negative verbal feedback regarding appearance (teasing), and body mass index (BMI). Methods: Three samples of adolescent girls from Sweden (Grade 8: n = 260; mean age = 14.3) and Australia (Grade 7: n = 159; mean age = 12.8 and Grade 8: n = 210; mean age = 13.7) completed two measures of eating restraint and one scale each reflective of bulimic symptomatology, teasing history, and body dissatisfaction. Results: Path analyses revealed that BMI predicted teasing and body dissatisfaction, and body dissatisfaction predicted level of eating restraint. In all three samples, there was evidence of partial mediation by teasing of the connection between BMI and restraint. Discussion: The results partially replicate previous work with U.S. samples. The findings are discussed with regard to the need for further cross-cultural work and its relevance for identifying factors for early intervention and prevention programs.
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| 4. |
- Martin, DP, et al.
(författare)
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The emergence and ongoing convergent evolution of the N501Y lineages coincides with a major global shift in the SARS-CoV-2 selective landscape
- 2021
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Ingår i: medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences. - : Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The emergence and rapid rise in prevalence of three independent SARS-CoV-2 “501Y lineages’’, B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1, in the last three months of 2020 prompted renewed concerns about the evolutionary capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to adapt to both rising population immunity, and public health interventions such as vaccines and social distancing. Viruses giving rise to the different 501Y lineages have, presumably under intense natural selection following a shift in host environment, independently acquired multiple unique and convergent mutations. As a consequence, all have gained epidemiological and immunological properties that will likely complicate the control of COVID-19. Here, by examining patterns of mutations that arose in SARS-CoV-2 genomes during the pandemic we find evidence of a major change in the selective forces acting on various SARS-CoV-2 genes and gene segments (such as S, nsp2 and nsp6), that likely coincided with the emergence of the 501Y lineages. In addition to involving continuing sequence diversification, we find evidence that a significant portion of the ongoing adaptive evolution of the 501Y lineages also involves further convergence between the lineages. Our findings highlight the importance of monitoring how members of these known 501Y lineages, and others still undiscovered, are convergently evolving similar strategies to ensure their persistence in the face of mounting infection and vaccine induced host immune recognition.
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| 7. |
- Nguyen, Hong Hanh, et al.
(författare)
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"I can make more from selling medicine when breaking the rules" : understanding the antibiotic supply network in a rural community in Viet Nam
- 2019
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Ingår i: BMC Public Health. - : BioMed Central. - 1471-2458. ; 19:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: As in many other low and middle income countries (LIMCs), Vietnam has experienced a major growth in the pharmaceutical industry, with large numbers of pharmacies and drug stores, and increasing drug expenditure per capita over the past decade. Despite regulatory frameworks that have been introduced to control the dispensing and use of prescription-only drugs, including antibiotics, compliance has been reported to be strikingly low particularly in rural parts of Vietnam. This qualitative study aimed to understand antibiotic access and use practices in the community from both supplier and consumer perspectives in order to support the identification and development of future interventions.METHODS: This qualitative study was part of a project on community antibiotic access and use (ABACUS) in six LMICs. The focus was Ba Vi district of Hanoi capital city, where we conducted 16 indepth interviews (IDIs) with drug suppliers, and 16 IDIs and 6 focus group discussions (FGDs) with community members. Drug suppliers were sampled based on mapping of all informal and formal antibiotic purchase or dispensing points in the study area. Community members were identified through local networks and relationships with the field collaborators. All IDIs and FGDs were audio-taped, transcribed and analysed using content analysis.RESULTS: We identified a large number of antibiotic suppliers in the locality with widespread infringements of regulatory requirements. Established reciprocal relationships between suppliers and consumers in drug transactions were noted, as was the consumers' trust in the knowledge and services provided by the suppliers. In addition, antibiotic use has become a habitual choice in most illness conditions, driven by both suppliers and consumers.CONCLUSIONS: This study presents an analysis of the practices of antibiotic access and use in a rural Vietnamese setting. It highlights the interactions between antibiotic suppliers and consumers in the community and identifies possible targets for interventions.
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| 8. |
- Phu, Vu Dinh, et al.
(författare)
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Ventilator-associated respiratory infection in a resource-restricted setting: impact and etiology
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Intensive Care. - : BioMed Central (BMC). - 2052-0492. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ventilator-associated respiratory infection (VARI) is a significant problem in resource-restricted intensive care units (ICUs), but differences in casemix and etiology means VARI in resource-restricted ICUs may be different from that found in resource-rich units. Data from these settings are vital to plan preventative interventions and assess their cost-effectiveness, but few are available.
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| 9. |
- Ruth, Mike Marvin, et al.
(författare)
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A bedaquiline/clofazimine combination regimen might add activity to the treatment of clinically relevant non-tuberculous mycobacteria
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. - : OXFORD UNIV PRESS. - 0305-7453 .- 1460-2091. ; 74:4, s. 935-943
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infections are hard to treat. New antimicrobial drugs and smarter combination regimens are needed.Objectives: Our aim was to determine the in vitro activity of bedaquiline against NTM and assess its synergy with established antimycobacterials.Methods: We determined MICs of bedaquiline for clinically relevant NTM species and Mycobacterium tuberculosis by broth microdilution for 30 isolates. Synergy testing was performed using the chequerboard method for 22 reference strains and clinical isolates of Mycobacterium abscessus (MAB) and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC). Time-kill kinetics (TK) assays with resistance monitoring of bedaquiline alone and combined with clofazimine were performed for MAB CIP 104536 and M. avium ATCC 700898; bedaquiline/clarithromycin combinations were evaluated against M. avium ATCC 700898. Interactions were assessed for TK experiments based on Bliss independence.Results: Bedaquiline had modest activity against tested NTM, with MICs between <0.007and 1mg/L. Bedaquiline showed no interaction with tested drugs against MAB or MAC. Lowest mean fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI) values were 0.79 with clofazimine for MAB and 0.97 with clofazimine and 0.82 with clarithromycin for MAC. In TK assays, bedaquiline showed a bacteriostatic effect. Clofazimine extended the bacteriostatic activity of bedaquiline against MAB and yielded a slight bactericidal effect against M. avium. The bedaquiline/clofazimine combination slowed emergence of bedaquiline resistance for M. avium but promoted it for MAB. Relative to Bliss independence, bedaquiline/clofazimine showed synergistic interaction over time for MAB and no interaction for M. avium and bedaquiline/clarithromycin showed antagonistic interaction for M. avium.Conclusions: Following these in vitro data, a bedaquiline/clofazimine combination might add activity to MAB and MAC treatment. The bedaquiline/clarithromycin combination might have lower activity compared with bedaquiline alone for MAC treatment.
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| 10. |
- Ruth, Mike Marvin, et al.
(författare)
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Standard therapy of Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease shows limited efficacy in an open source hollow fibre system that simulates human plasma and epithelial lining fluid pharmacokinetics
- 2022
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Ingår i: Clinical Microbiology and Infection. - : Elsevier. - 1198-743X .- 1469-0691. ; 28:3, s. 448.e1-448.e7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objectives: Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) bacteria can cause chronic pulmonary disease (PD). Current treatment regimens of azithromycin, ethambutol and rifampicin have culture conversion rates of around 65%. Dynamic, preclinical models to assess the efficacy of treatment regimens are important to guide clinical trial development. The hollow fibre system (HFS) has been applied but reports lack experimental details.Methods: We simulated the human pharmacokinetics of azithromycin, ethambutol and rifampicin both in plasma and epithelial lining fluid (ELF) in a HFS, exposing THP-1 cells infected with M. avium to the triple-drug regimen for 3 weeks. We accounted for drug-drug interactions and protein-binding and provide all laboratory protocols. We differentiated the effects on the intracellular and extracellular mycobacterial population.Results: The antibiotic concentrations in the HFS accurately reflected the time to peak concentration (T-max), the peak concentration (C-max) and half-life of azithromycin, rifampicin and ethambutol in plasma and ELF reported in literature. We find that plasma drug concentrations fail to hold the MAC bacterial load static (Delta Log10 CFU/ml(Control:Regimen) = 0.66 +/- 0.76 and 0.45 +/- 0.28 at 3 and 21 days); ELF concentrations do hold the bacterial load static for 3 days and inhibit bacterial growth for the duration of the experiment (Delta Log10 CFU/ml(Control:Regimen) = 1.1 +/- 0.1 and 1.64 +/- 0.59 at 3 and 21 days).Discussion: In our model, the current therapy against MAC is ineffective, even when accounting for antibiotic accumulation at the site of infection and intracellularly. New treatment regimens need to be developed and be compared with currently recommended regimens in dynamic models prior to clinical evaluation. With the publication of all protocols we aim to open this technology to new users.
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