Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis technique failure in adult patients treated at a tertiary hospital in central South Africa: a retrospective analytical study.

Background: Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) is one of the kidney replacement therapy (KRT) modalities used in patients with kidney failure. It is the preferred modality in most resource-limited settings as it is more accessible and cost-effective. CAPD technique failure remains a challenge and is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality.

Epihiper-A high performance computational modeling framework to support epidemic science.

This paper describes Epihiper, a state-of-the-art, high performance computational modeling framework for epidemic science. The Epihiper modeling framework supports custom disease models, and can simulate epidemics over dynamic, large-scale networks while supporting modulation of the epidemic evolution through a set of user-programmable interventions. The nodes and edges of the social-contact network have customizable sets of static and dynamic attributes which allow the user to specify intervention target sets at a very fine-grained level; these also permit the network to be updated in response to nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as school closures.

Modeling how and why aquatic vegetation removal can free rural households from poverty-disease traps.

Infectious disease can reduce labor productivity and incomes, trapping subpopulations in a vicious cycle of ill health and poverty. Efforts to boost African farmers' agricultural production through fertilizer use can inadvertently promote the growth of aquatic vegetation that hosts disease vectors. Recent trials established that removing aquatic vegetation habitat for snail intermediate hosts reduces schistosomiasis infection rates in children, while converting the harvested vegetation into compost boosts agricultural productivity and incomes.

Restoration of physiologic loading after engineered disc implantation mitigates immobilization-induced facet joint and paraspinal muscle degeneration.

Intervertebral disc degeneration is commonly associated with back and neck pain, and standard surgical treatments do not restore spine function. Replacement of the degenerative disc with a living, tissue-engineered construct has the potential to restore normal structure and function to the spine. Toward this goal, our group developed endplate-modified disc-like angle-ply structures (eDAPS) that recapitulate the native structure and function of the disc.