Publications by authors named "A H Diacon"

Six months of chemotherapy using current agents is standard of care for pulmonary, drug-sensitive tuberculosis (TB), even though some are believed to be cured more rapidly and others require longer therapy. Understanding what factors determine the length of treatment required for durable cure in individual patients would allow individualization of treatment durations, provide better clinical tools to determine the of appropriate duration of new regimens, as well as reduce the cost of large Phase III studies to determine the optimal combinations to use in TB control programs. We conducted a randomized clinical trial in South Africa and China that recruited 704 participants with newly diagnosed, drug-sensitive pulmonary tuberculosis and stratified them based on radiographic disease characteristics as assessed by FDG PET/CT scan readers.

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Background: The broad use of bedaquiline and pretomanid as the mainstay of new regimens to combat tuberculosis is a risk due to increasing bedaquiline resistance. We aimed to assess the safety, bactericidal activity, and pharmacokinetics of BTZ-043, a first-in-class DprE1 inhibitor with strong bactericidal activity in murine models.

Methods: This open-label, dose-expansion, randomised, controlled, phase 1b/2a trial was conducted in two specialised tuberculosis sites in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Limited studies have been conducted on the safety and effectiveness of heterologous COVID-19 vaccine boosting in lower income settings, especially those with high-HIV prevalence., The Sisonke Heterologous mRNA-1273 boost after prime with Ad26.COV2.

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Background: Quabodepistat (formerly OPC-167832) showed potent activity in preclinical studies and in the first stage of an early bactericidal activity study in adults with smear-positive, drug-susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis. Stage 2 of this study was designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and early bactericidal activity of quabodepistat in combination with delamanid, bedaquiline, or both versus rifampicin, isoniazid, ethambutol, and pyrazinamide combination therapy for 14 days.

Methods: Stage 2 of this open-label, active-controlled, randomised, parallel-group study was conducted at two research sites in South Africa in adults (aged 18-64 years) with drug-susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis.

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The primary aim of this study was to synthesize and characterize polyurethane (PUR) foams derived from the depolymerization products of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and MXenes (NbAlC). The depolymerized PET products were produced through a zinc acetate-catalyzed glycolysis process using diethylene glycol (DEG) as solvent. These glycolysis products were then reacted with 4,4'-diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), commercial polyols, and MXenes to produce the PUR foams.

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