Publications by authors named "Ana F Pires"

Introduction: Lumbar epidural anaesthesia is a commonly used technique for analgesia during labour. One of the rare complications of this technique is pneumocephalus.

Case Description: We report the case of a 35-year-old female admitted to the Emergency Department with severe headache associated with fast head movements.

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The National Network for CD4+ T-lymphocyte counting of Brazil comprises 93 laboratories. This study reports the laboratory performances achieved in external quality assessment (EQA) rounds provides by Ministry of Health to evaluate the quality of the kits used and the performance of test by the technicians.Ten EQA rounds were analyzed according the EQA criteria aimed to evaluate individual laboratory performance on the basis of the accuracy of their results compared to the general mean obtained by all participating laboratories and the reproducibility of the results obtained between 2 samples from the same donor.

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Introduction: In Brazil, more than 487,450 individuals are currently undergoing antiretroviral treatment. In order to monitor the transmission of drug-resistant strains and HIV subtype distribution in the country, this work aimed to estimate its prevalence and to characterize the nationwide pretreatment drug resistance in individuals recently diagnosed with HIV between 2013 and 2015.

Methods: The HIV threshold survey methodology (HIV-THS, WHO) targeting antiretroviral-naive individuals with recent HIV diagnosis was utilized, and subjects were selected from 51 highly populated cities in all five Brazilian macroregions.

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Background: Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by decreased bone mass and increased bone fragility. Despite increasing research on the biomedical aspects of the disease, only a few studies focus on the psychosocial implications of living with OI. This study aimed to explore the situations that are perceived by OI type-1 children, their parents and siblings, as being the most distressing and stressful in their experience with the disease.

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Nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) are potent and well tolerated. In Brazil, the first-generation NNRTI efavirenz is included in the majority of first-line antiretroviral treatment regimens. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of etravirine, a new second-generation NNRTI, among patients failing antiretroviral regimens containing first-generation NNRTIs.

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HIV-1 budding requires short peptide motifs in p6(Gag), known as late domains, that promote the release of infectious virions. The primary late domain of HIV-1 is a Pro-(Thr/Ser)-Ala-Pro (hereafter referred to as a PTAP) motif. This motif may be completely or partially duplicated.

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