Delirium in HIV-infected patients admitted to acute medical wards post universal access to antiretrovirals in South Africa.

Background: Delirium is associated with increased mortality and length of hospital stay. Limited data are available from HIV-infected acute hospital admissions in developing countries. We conducted a prospective study of delirium among acute medical admissions in South Africa (SA), a developing country with universal antiretroviral therapy (ART) access and high burdens of tuberculosis (TB) and non-communicable disease.

Safety and efficacy of an attenuated heartwater (Ehrlichia ruminantium) vaccine administered by the intramuscular route in cattle, sheep and Angora goats.

Heartwater is an economically important tick-borne disease of ruminants in Africa. The current commercial vaccine uses live Ehrlichia ruminantium from blood of infected sheep, requires antibiotic treatment during infection, needs to be administered intravenously and does not protect against all South African isolates. An attenuated tissue culture vaccine not requiring antibiotic treatment and effective against different field strains in small groups of goats and sheep was reported previously.

Metabolomics describes previously unknown toxicity mechanisms of isoniazid and rifampicin.

Isoniazid and rifampicin are well-known anti-mycobacterial agents and are widely used to treat pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) as part of the combined therapy approach, recommended by the World Health Organization. The ingestion of these first-line TB drugs are, however, not free of side effects, and are toxic to the liver, kidney, and central nervous system. These side effects are associated with poor treatment compliance, resulting in TB treatment failure, relapse and drug resistant TB.

Invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast: assessment of proliferative activity using automated Ki-67 immunostaining.

Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) is almost always classified as Nottingham histological grade 2. Despite this, prognosis is markedly varied, with some ILCs behaving more akin to grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). Methods to separate these aggressive ILCs are needed.

Time-Dependent Changes in Urinary Metabolome Before and After Intensive Phase Tuberculosis Therapy: A Pharmacometabolomics Study.

Pharmacometabolomics is a rapidly emerging omics science signaling the convergence of clinical pharmacology, metabolomics, precision medicine, and biomarker research. Tuberculosis (TB) treatment outcomes have complex biological, environmental, and social determinants and thus, represent a promising application of pharmacometabolomics. In samples of 23 patients undergoing intensive phase TB therapy for 4 weeks, we identified drug-induced host-metabolome variations before and at repeated time intervals post-treatment: (1) an overall reduction in the oxidative stress levels over the course of TB treatment; (2) a time-dependent induction and inhibition of several enzymes in response to the drugs (CYP2E1, CYP3A4, alcohol dehydrogenase, and aminocarboxymuconate-semialdehyde decarboxylase), and altered oxidative stress levels (aconitase, formylglycine-generating enzyme, α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase, and succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase); (3) an upregulated urea cycle; and (4) altered insulin production.