Background: Pregnancy can be a stressful time for many women. There is ample evidence of numerous physical and mental health inequities for Indigenous Australians. For those Indigenous women who are pregnant, it is established that there is a higher incidence of poor physical perinatal outcomes when compared with non-Indigenous Australians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSerogroup C meningococcal conjugate vaccines were introduced in Greece in 2001, and although no cases of serogroup C meningococcal disease were recorded in 2004, a steady increase was observed since 2005. In this study, serum bactericidal activity was assessed in sera of 269 vaccinated children at a mean time of about 5 years after vaccination. Non-protective antibody titers were observed in most children vaccinated at age <6 years (85.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInflammatory responses to lipo-oligosaccharide (LOS) contribute to the severity of meningococcal disease. Strains that express the L(3,7,9) LOS immunotypes are isolated from the majority of patients, but other immunotypes are isolated predominantly from carriers. Inflammatory responses elicited from a human monocytic cell line (THP-1) that had been pretreated with vitamin D3 (VD3) were compared after stimulation with purified LOSs from standard immunotype strains.
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