Publications by authors named "Maria F Villegas"

Traditionally, patient travel history has been used to distinguish imported from autochthonous malaria cases, but the dormant liver stages of Plasmodium vivax confound this approach. Molecular tools offer an alternative method to identify, and map imported cases. Using machine learning approaches incorporating hierarchical fixation index and decision tree analyses applied to 799 P.

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Plasmodium vivax has the largest geographic range of human malaria species and is challenging to manage and eradicate due to its ability to establish a dormant liver stage, the hypnozoite, which can reactivate leading to relapse. Until recently, the only treatment approved to kill hypnozoites was the 8-aminoquinoline, primaquine, requiring daily treatment for 14 days. Tafenoquine, an 8-aminoquinoline single-dose treatment with activity against P.

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Background: Tafenoquine, a single-dose therapy for Plasmodium vivax malaria, has been associated with relapse prevention through the clearance of P. vivax parasitemia and hypnozoites, termed "radical cure."

Methods: We performed a phase 3, prospective, double-blind, double-dummy, randomized, controlled trial to compare tafenoquine with primaquine in terms of safety and efficacy.

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This paper proposes a facile strategy for the zwitterionization of bioceramics that is based on the direct incorporation of l-lysine amino acid via the ε-amino group onto mesoporous MCM-41 materials. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) studies of lysine-grafted MCM-41 (MCM-LYS) simultaneously showed bands at 3080 and 1540 cm and bands at 1625 and 1415 cm corresponding to -NH/COO pairs, which demonstrate the incorporation of the amino acid on the material surface keeping its zwitterionic character. Both elemental and thermogravimetric analyses showed that the amount of grafted lysine was 8 wt.

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