Predictors of maternal HIV acquisition during pregnancy and lactation in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

Objectives: To eliminate vertical transmission of HIV, global institutions recommend using a risk-guided approach for HIV prevention services in antenatal and postnatal settings. Identifying predictors of maternal HIV acquisition can inform the development of risk-guided approaches, but individual studies of predictors can have limited power and generalizability.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review and narrative synthesis to identify common predictors of maternal HIV acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Operationalizing implementation science frameworks to plan a hybrid effectiveness-implementation study of a digital health intervention.

Background: Evaluating implementation of digital health interventions (DHIs) in practice settings is complex, involving diverse users and multistep processes. Proactive planning can ensure desired implementation determinants and outcomes are captured for hybrid studies, but operational guidance for DHI studies is limited.

Methods: We planned a cluster randomized, type II hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial testing PositiveLinks, a smartphone application for HIV care, compared to usual care (n = 6 sites per arm), among HIV outpatient sites in the DC Cohort Longitudinal HIV Study in Washington, DC.

Rational Pathways to Ordered Multianion Chalcogenides Using Retrosynthetic Crystal Chemistry.

Mixed-anion chalcogenides make up a versatile class of materials with properties that can be fine-tuned for specific applications. While chalcogen anions (Q = S, Se, or Te) tend to form solid solutions in simple binary systems, ordering does occur in structures that have more than one unique anion site. Here, we use crystallographic analysis and hard-soft acid-base principles to predict the Wyckoff positions that secondary chalcogens will occupy in a range of single-anion hosts.

Changes in indicators of cerebral metabolic stress following treatment with voxelotor in children and adolescents with sickle cell anemia.

Voxelotor is a small molecule that reduces the polymerization of sickle hemoglobin by increasing its affinity for oxygen. In patients with sickle cell anemia, it has been postulated that increasing hemoglobin-oxygen affinity could limit oxygen offloading from hemoglobin, causing an increase in cerebral metabolic stress. To investigate this hypothetical concern, we used multimodal brain imaging to define the effects of voxelotor on cerebral blood flow and oxygen extraction.