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- Friman, Vanda, 1952, et al.
(författare)
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IL-10-driven immunoglobulin production by B lymphocytes from IgA-deficient individuals correlates to infection proneness.
- 1996
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Ingår i: Clinical and experimental immunology. - 0009-9104. ; 104:3, s. 432-8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In search for a possible explanation of the phenotypic heterogeneity in IgA deficiency, we studied the function of B cells from IgA-deficient (IgAd) individuals. Two groups of IgAd individuals, one frequently infected and one clinically apparently healthy, as well as normal controls, were studied. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and B cells from IgAd individuals and controls were cultured with Staphylococcus aureus Cowan I strain and with anti-CD40 MoAb presented on the CD32-transfected fibroblast cell line in the presence of IL-10. In this experimental system PBMC and B cells from the infection-prone IgAd individuals produced only minute amounts of IgA. In contrast, PBMC and B cells from healthy IgAd subjects secreted significantly more IgA1 and IgA2 in comparison with infection-prone IgAd patients (P < 0.05). These data suggest that the abnormalities of B cell differentiation in IgAd could be of heterogeneous origin. Thus, whereas in healthy IgAd subjects IgA production may be efficiently up-regulated in vitro by addition of IL-10 to CD40-activated B cell culture, the corresponding B cell differentiation does not occur in infection-prone IgAd patients. These observations provide a conceptual framework for phenotypic heterogeneity in IgAd subjects.
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- Hanson, S, et al.
(författare)
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Case management and patient reactions: a study of STD care in a province in Zambia
- 1997
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Ingår i: International journal of STD & AIDS. - : SAGE Publications. - 0956-4624 .- 1758-1052. ; 8:5, s. 320-328
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sexually transmitted disease (STD) case management was evaluated through observation and interviews at 2 urban and 4 rural health centres and 2 district hospital STD clinics in one urban and 2 rural districts in Central Province, Zambia. The analysis was limited to 59 patients (42 men and 17 women) who paid first visits for their disease and were managed by a clinical officer. The evaluation suffered from the lack of a standard for case management. Results showed that the patients engaged in risky sexual behaviour without being aware of the risks. At the health institutions, few patients were informed about condoms, the risk of HIV, and abstinence from sex during treatment and few were asked to notify their partners. Clinical officers with special STD training performed better than others but sill informed only one-fifth of the patients. Few clinical officers managed patients according to the syndromic approach recommended by the STD control programme.
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- West, Jay B., et al.
(författare)
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Comparison and evaluation of retrospective intermodality image registration techniques
- 1997
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Ingår i: SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. - : SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering. ; , s. 332-347
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- All retrospective image registration methods have attached to them some intrinsic estimate of registration error. However, this estimate of accuracy may not always be a good indicator of the distance between actual and estimated positions of targets within the cranial cavity. This paper describes a project whose principal goal is to use a prospective method based on fiducial markers as a ’gold standard’ to perform an objective, blinded evaluation of the accuracy of several retrospective image-to-image registration techniques. Image volumes of three modalities – CT, MR, and PET – were taken of patients undergoing neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. These volumes had all traces of the fiducial markers removed, and were provided to project collaborators outside Vanderbilt, who then performed retrospective registrations on the volumes, calculating transformations from CT to MR and/or from PET to MR, and communicated their transformations to Vanderbilt where the accuracy of each registration was evaluated. In this evaluation the accuracy is measured at multiple ’regions of interest,’ i.e. areas in the brain which would commonly be areas of neurological interest. A region is defined in the MR image and its centroid C is determined. Then the prospective registration is used to obtain the corresponding point C’ in CT or PET. To this point the retrospective registration is then applied, producing C’ in MR. Statistics are gathered on the target registration error (TRE), which is the disparity between the original point C and its corresponding point C’. A second goal of the project is to evaluate the importance of correcting geometrical distortion in MR images, by comparing the retrospective TRE in the rectified images, i.e., those which have had the distortion correction applied, with that of the same images before rectification. This paper presents preliminary results of this study along with a brief description of each registration technique and an estimate of both preparation and execution time needed to perform the registration.
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- Hanson, S, et al.
(författare)
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STD care in Zambia: an evaluation of the guidelines for case management through a syndromic approach
- 1996
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Ingår i: International journal of STD & AIDS. - : SAGE Publications. - 0956-4624 .- 1758-1052. ; 7:5, s. 324-332
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Clinical diagnosis of STDs is unreliable and therefore constitutes a poor basis for choice of treatment. A syndromic approach has been suggested to increase effectiveness of treatment in resource poor settings. Algorithms for the treatment of STD syndromes were evaluated. A total of 436 patients were followed; cure rates were defined and estimated for genital ulcer disease (GUD), urethral and vaginal discharge. Cure rates for the discharge syndromes were high, 97-98%, for both sexes. The cure rate for GUD was 83% for female and 69% for male patients. A higher prevalence of syphilis in the female study population probably contributed to this. It is likely that a large proportion of the treatment failures were due to decreased susceptibility of Haemophilus ducreyi to trimethoprim-sulpha. The determination of cure rates met with a number of methodological problems. This makes it difficult to evaluate the algorithms as part of routine activities, as suggested earlier by WHO.
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- Isacsson, A, et al.
(författare)
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Social network, social support and the prevalence of neck and low back pain after retirement. A population study of men born in 1914 in Malmo, Sweden
- 1995
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Social Medicine. - 0300-8037. ; 23:1, s. 17-22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study we investigated the importance of social network and social support systems outside the workplace and workload and psychological job strain in former work for the prevalence of daily neck and low back pain. The study population (n = 621) comprised a random half of all male residents in Malmo, Sweden, born in 1914, of whom 500 (80.5%) participated. Two of the social network and social support indices (social anchorage and availability of material and informational support) were independent of life-style factors (leisure time physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption) related to daily neck and back pain after retirement (OR = 2.0, 95% CI 1.2-3.4 and OR = 1.7, 95% CI 1.0-2.7, respectively), while the psycho-social and physical factors in former work were not. As no conclusion about the direction of the association can be drawn, prospective studies are needed to further explore these findings.
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