Histoplasmosis poses a significant risk to HIV patients, particularly in regions with limited access to antiretroviral therapy. Antigen detection assays are crucial in these settings for timely diagnosis and treatment, which can reduce mortality. While commercial antigen detection kits have performed well in diagnosing histoplasmosis, their effectiveness in monitoring treatment remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Chronic pulmonary aspergillosis is a fungal disease that, without specific treatment, generates a slow and progressive destruction of the lung parenchyma. The recommended pharmacological therapy is long-term oral antifungal administration. The efficacy of the treatment (especially with itraconazole) is around 65% and the frequency of recurrences 10-15%.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe investigated the influence of the photobleaching (PB) effect on the dosimetry performances of a phosphosilicate single-mode optical fiber (core diameter of 6.6 µm) operated at 638 nm, within the framework of the LUMINA project. Different irradiation tests were performed under ~40 keV mean energy fluence X-rays at a 530 µ Gy(SiO)/s dose rate to measure in situ the radiation-induced attenuation (RIA) growth and decay kinetics while injecting a 638 nm laser diode source with powers varying from 500 nW to 1 mW.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Histoplasmosis is a systemic mycosis of universal distribution, highly endemic in the Americas. It is caused by a dimorphic fungus Histoplasma capsulatum var. capsulatum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the case of a twenty six year-old woman with rheumatoid arthritis, treated with certolizumab. She sought medical attention due to cough, fever and night sweats. X-ray exam showed a miliary pneumonia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Fungal infections in patients with COVID-19 was one of the most debated topics during the pandemic.
Objectives: To analyze the clinical characteristics and evolution of people living with HIV/AIDS and coinfection with cryptococcus and COVID-19 (group A) or without it (group B).
Materials And Methods: This is an analytical and retrospective study.
Introduction: Sporotrichosis is an implantation mycosis caused by Sporothrix spp. It is distributed worldwide and can be found in vegetation and soil. The most frequent route of infection is by trauma with elements contaminated with fungal propagules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA case of tinea corporis by observed in Argentina is presented. The patient had a history of having spent 18 months in Tulum, Mexico. She was suffering from tinea corporis in the anterior region of both thighs and the gluteal area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe demonstrate the possibility to modify the Brillouin scattering properties of a microstructured pure-silica core optical fiber, by infiltrating a liquid inside its holes. In particular, we show that the dependence of the Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) on the temperature can be reduced by infiltration, owing to the large negative thermo-optic coefficient of the liquid. Infiltrating a chloroform-acetonitrile mixture with a refractive index of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Cryptococcosis is one of the most serious opportunistic diseases in patients living with HIV. For this reason, early diagnosis and appropriate treatment are important.
Objectives: The aim of the study was to understand the development of patients diagnosed with cryptococcosis by detection of antigen in serum by lateral flow assay (CrAg LFA) without nervous system involvement and with treatment in accordance with the results.
Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are point optical fiber sensors that allow the monitoring of a diversity of environmental parameters, e.g., temperature or strain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the present paper, we investigate how the optical and structural properties, in particular the observed photoluminescence (PL) of photocurable and organic-inorganic TiO-SiO sol-gel films doped with Rhodamine 6G (R6G) are affected by γ-rays. For this, four luminescent films, firstly polymerized with UV photons (365 nm), were submitted to different accumulated doses of 50 kGy, 200 kGy, 500 kGy and 1 MGy while one sample was kept as a reference and unirradiated. The PL, recorded under excitations at 365 nm, 442 nm and 488 nm clearly evidences that a strong signal peaking at 564 nm is still largely present in the γ-irradiated samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report a set of femtosecond (fs) transient absorption (TA) measurements following the dynamics of the so-called nonbridging oxygen hole center in silica, a model color center in wide bandgap amorphous solids, characterized by a very large Stokes shift between the UV excitation and its associated red emission at 1.9 eV. The changes in the TA spectrum were probed in the UV-visible range at various delays after photoexcitation and analyzed as a function of the UV excitation energy, in single-photon absorption conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA descriptive observational and cross-sectional study was carried out. The clinical characteristics, etiologic agents, treatments and outcome of 33 cases of tinea capitis in the Mycology Unit at Francisco J. Muñiz Hospital of Buenos Aires City between January 2015 and December 2019 were analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 31-year-old woman, with signs of HIV infection (oral thrush, weight loss, asthenia) presented to our hospital with dyspnea and fever. A rapid HIV test yielded a positive result, and cryptococcal capsular antigen was detected in serum. In the mycological study of the clinical respiratory samples, yeasts compatible with Cryptococcus were observed under light microscope in a wet mount; structures compatible with Pneumocystis jirovecii were also observed in Giemsa stain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cryptococcosis is a severe universally distributed mycosis which mainly affects immunocompromised hosts. This mycosis is caused by yeasts of two species complex of the genus Cryptococcus: Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii. Meningeal cryptococcosis is the most frequent clinical presentation of this disseminated mycosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report here the response of a commercial ultra-low loss (ULL) single-mode (SM) pure silica core (PSC) fiber, the Vascade EX1000 fiber from Corning, associated with 0.16 dB/km losses at 1.55 µm to 40 keV X-rays at room temperature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe disease caused by the new SARS-CoV-2, known as Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was first identified in China in December 2019 and rapidly spread around the world. Coinfections with fungal pathogens in patients with COVID-19 add challenges to patient care. We conducted a literature review on fungal coinfections in patients with COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe photo-induced effects on sol-gel-based organo TiO-SiO thin layers deposited by the dip-coating technique have been investigated using two very different light sources: A light-emitting diode (LED) emitting in the UV (at 365 nm, 3.4 eV) and an X-ray tube producing 40 keV mean-energy photons. The impact of adding a photo-initiator (2,2-dimethoxy-2-phenylacetophenone-DMPA) on the sol-gel photosensitivity is characterized namely in terms of the photo-induced refractive index measured through M-line spectroscopy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe potential of fiber-based sensors to monitor the fluence of atmospheric neutrons is evaluated through accelerated tests at the TRIUMF Neutron Facility (TNF) (BC, Canada), offering a flux approximatively 10 higher than the reference spectrum observed under standard conditions in New York City, USA. The radiation-induced attenuation (RIA) at 1625 nm of a phosphorus-doped radiation sensitive optical fiber is shown to linearly increase with neutron fluence, allowing an in situ and easy monitoring of the neutron flux and fluence at this facility. Furthermore, our experiments show that the fiber response remains sensitive to the ionization processes, at least up to a fluence of 7.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAspergillosis is a set of very frequent and widely distributed opportunistic diseases. Azoles are the first choice for most clinical forms. However, the distribution of azole-resistant strains is not well known around the world, especially in developing countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 21 year-old man, HIV infected, and with poor adherence to antiretroviral treatment, consulted us due to a papular rash on trunk and extremities, showing simultaneously hypochromic stains on his back. He was afebrile and hemodynamically stable. In the mycological study of the clinical samples taken from different lesions, yeasts compatible with Malassezia were observed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe radiation responses of different high-power erbium/ytterbium-codoped fiber amplifiers (HP-EYDFA) have been investigated up to 100 krad (SiO) dose levels. These devices are able to deliver 20 W of signal output power at 1565 nm by pumping at 915 nm (43 W) radiation tolerant (Er/Yb) or radiation hardened (ErYbCe) active few mode fibers; these performances are needed for free-space communications between low-orbit satellites and ground transceivers. X-ray irradiation results show that, thanks to a positive influence of the photo- and thermal-bleaching phenomena associated with such high-power operating conditions, the gain degradation levels of HP-EYDFA based on radiation hardened fibers remain below 6% after 100 krad at an accelerated dose rate of 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFiber Bragg grating inscription with infrared femtosecond pulsed lasers in photonic crystal fiber is far from being trivial due to the presence of air holes in the cladding region and the non-linear nature of the absorption process inducing the required refractive index changes. We have studied this problem numerically and experimentally for a phase mask-based writing setup equipped with short focal length cylindrical lenses, which are often used for through-coating and high temperature stable grating writing. We have shown that for a cylindrical lens with a focal length f of 10 mm, the hexagonal lattice PCF needs to be translated away from the beam waist position by around 15 µm to efficiently deliver the energy to the core region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe case of a 60 year old woman with hemoptysis and a thin-walled cavitary lesion at the upper lobe of the right lung is presented. The woman presented at the Mycology Unit of the Muñiz Hospital in Buenos Aires City 3 months after the beginning of her clinical manifestations. A hyaline micelial fungus with chlamido-arthroconidias was isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage.
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