Mobile health to improve tuberculosis care and control: a call worth making.

The use of mobile phones has substantially increased throughout the world over the last decade. This has opened up opportunities for the integration of mobile phones as health intervention tools in many aspects of health care, including prevention, diagnosis, data collection, treatment and adherence monitoring and surveillance. Several applications have been explored in human immunodeficiency virus care.

Gamma interferon release assay for monitoring of treatment response for active tuberculosis: an explosion in the spaghetti factory.

Few studies have correlated the results of interferon (gamma interferon) release assays (IGRAs) with known markers of tuberculosis (TB) treatment response. We report the results of serial QuantiFERON-TB gold in-tube assay (QFT) testing on 149 patients with active tuberculosis and correlate the results with smear and culture conversion. We show that QFT results do not offer much value for treatment monitoring of TB disease.

Point-of-care testing for infectious diseases: diversity, complexity, and barriers in low- and middle-income countries.

Madhukar Pai and colleagues discuss a framework for envisioning how point-of-care testing can be applied to infectious diseases in low- and middle-income countries.

Increased multi-drug resistance among the elderly on admission to the hospital--a 12-year surveillance study.

Resistance to antimicrobials continues to increase worldwide. Data suggest that older patients are among the main reservoirs of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in the hospital. We hypothesized that older patients (≥ 65 years of age) are more likely to harbor MDRO at hospital admission.

Promise versus reality: optimism bias in package inserts for tuberculosis diagnostics.

Laboratorians and clinicians often rely on package inserts of diagnostic tests to assess their accuracy. We compared test accuracy for tuberculosis diagnostics reported in 19 package inserts against estimates in published meta-analyses and found that package inserts generally report overoptimistic accuracy estimates. However, package inserts of most tests approved by the U.

Physical activity for the prevention of cognitive decline: current evidence from observational and controlled studies.

A sedentary life style has been associated with different types of dementia in several cross sectional, longitudinal, and case-controlled studies. However, randomized controlled trials that support this relationship are rare, have rather few participants, and mainly focus on physical (usually aerobic) exercise. The benefit of an increased physical activity (PA) has been mainly demonstrated for the prevention of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia, less so for other dementia types such as Lewy body dementia or frontotemporal dementia.

Immunodiagnosis of tuberculosis: state of the art.

Undiagnosed and mismanaged tuberculosis (TB) continues to fuel the global TB epidemic. Rapid, accurate and early diagnosis of TB is therefore a priority to improve TB case detection and interrupt transmission. Although considerable improvements have been made in TB diagnostics, there are two major gaps in the existing diagnostics pipeline: (1) lack of a simple accurate point-of-care test that can be used for rapid diagnosis at the primary care level; (2) lack of a biomarker (or combination of biomarkers) that can be used to identify latently infected individuals who will benefit most from preventive therapy.

Guidelines on interferon-γ release assays for tuberculosis infection: concordance, discordance or confusion?

Identification of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection and preventive therapy is important for TB control, especially in high-risk populations. Since the advent of interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs), many studies have evaluated their role in the diagnosis of active and latent TB. With the growing evidence base, many guidelines now include IGRAs.

Interferon-γ release assays for diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection: evidence in immune-mediated inflammatory disorders.

Purpose Of Review: To provide a narrative synthesis of evidence on interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in individuals with immune-mediated inflammatory disorders (IMIDs).

Recent Findings: Only a few studies have evaluated IGRAs in IMIDs, and most were small and varied considerably with respect to the use of immunosuppressive medications and types of IMIDs. Current evidence does not clearly suggest that IGRAs are better than tuberculin skin test (TST) in identifying individuals with IMID who could benefit from LTBI treatment.

Cryptosporidium parvum-associated sclerosing cholangitis in a liver transplant patient.

Cryptosporidium parvum causes severe long-standing diarrhea in immunocompromised patients. Sclerosing cholangitis caused by C. parvum is a rare complication in transplant recipients.

Pertussis toxin-induced cytokine differentiation and clonal expansion of T cells is mediated predominantly via costimulation.

Pertussis toxin (PTX) has potent immunologic adjuvant activity in vivo and concomitantly enhances both T helper type (Th1) and Th2 cytokine responses. The PTX-induced enhancement of Th1 and Th2 immunity is mediated via the activation of antigen presenting cells (APCs), but the underlying mechanism is not known. Here we asked whether the adjuvant activity of PTX on T cell immunity was mediated by cytokines and/or costimulatory signals.

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor and its role in autoimmune diseases.

After several decades of research into the macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), its diverse actions in the immune system are yet to be fully revealed. What has become clear is that MIF plays an important role in both innate and adaptive immunity. However, while several pathways mediating the function of MIF in the immune system have been established, its role in pathogenic states such as autoimmune diseases has remained unresolved.

In vivo blockade of macrophage migration inhibitory factor ameliorates acute experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis by impairing the homing of encephalitogenic T cells to the central nervous system.

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a cytokine that plays a critical role in the regulation of macrophage effector functions and T cell activation. However, its role in the pathogenesis of T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, such as experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), has remained unresolved. In this study, we report that anti-MIF Ab treatment of SJL mice with acute EAE improved the disease severity and accelerated the recovery.