Impact of a rural village women (Asha) intervention on adherence to antiretroviral therapy in southern India.

Background: Despite the increased prevalence of HIV in the rural female population of India, adherence to antiretroviral therapy continues to be low because of several barriers that discourage rural women.

Objectives: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of an intervention (Asha-Life) delivered by Accredited Social Health Activists (Asha) to improve antiretroviral therapy adherence of rural women living with AIDS in India compared with that of a usual care group.

Methods: Sixty-eight rural women living with AIDS, aged 18-45 years, participated in a prospective, randomized pilot clinical trial and were assessed for several factors affecting adherence, such as sociodemographic characteristics, health history, CD4 cell count, enacted stigma, depressive symptomology, help getting antiretroviral therapy, and perceived therapy benefits.

High levels of synaptosomal Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchangers (NCX1, NCX2, NCX3) co-localized with amyloid-beta in human cerebral cortex affected by Alzheimer's disease.

Synaptosomal expression of NCX1, NCX2, and NCX3, the three variants of the Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchanger (NCX), was investigated in Alzheimer's disease parietal cortex. Flow cytometry and immunoblotting techniques were used to analyze synaptosomes prepared from cryopreserved brain of cognitively normal aged controls and late stage Alzheimer's disease patients. Major findings that emerged from this study are: (1) NCX1 was the most abundant NCX isoform in nerve terminals of cognitively normal patients; (2) NCX2 and NCX3 protein levels were modulated in parietal cortex of late stage Alzheimer's disease: NCX2 positive terminals were increased in the Alzheimer's disease cohort while counts of NCX3 positive terminals were reduced; (3) NCX1, NCX2 and NCX3 isoforms co-localized with amyloid-beta in synaptic terminals and all three variants are up-regulated in nerve terminals containing amyloid-beta.