Publications by authors named "Mioara Alina Nicolaie"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates differences in antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 between children and adults, focusing on various Fc-mediated functions like phagocytosis and natural killer cell activation over a 10-month period.
- Results indicate that children exhibit similar, but potentially more durable, antibody responses, particularly in complement deposition, compared to adults, while natural killer cell activation was notably reduced in both groups.
- Understanding these differences is important for developing tailored vaccination strategies against respiratory viruses, highlighting the need for age-specific insights in vaccine design.
Article Synopsis
- Young children and older adults are particularly vulnerable to invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) due to lower levels of protective antibodies against Streptococcus pneumoniae.
- Research measured IgG and IgA antibodies in serum and saliva across different age groups, revealing that younger children have significantly lower antibody levels and avidity compared to adults.
- The findings suggest that repeated exposure to pneumococci through factors like daycare attendance boosts antibody levels, with young children’s low antibody profiles contributing to their susceptibility to IPD and older adults experiencing different influencing factors.
Respiratory pathogens can cause severe disease and even death, especially in the very young and very old. Studies investigating their prevalence often focus on individuals presenting to healthcare providers with symptoms. However, the design of prevention strategies, e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMumps outbreaks and breakthrough infections of measles and rubella have raised concerns about waning of vaccine-induced immunity after two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination. In the present follow-up study, serum IgG antibodies against mumps, measles and rubella, as well as the functional neutralizing antibodies against both the mumps vaccine strain and mumps outbreak strains were measured longitudinally in young adults that received a third MMR (MMR3) dose. The mumps-specific IgG and virus neutralizing antibody levels at 3 years after vaccination were still elevated compared to pre-vaccination antibody levels, although the differences were smaller than at earlier timepoints.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroductionThe contribution of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) to mortality can be estimated using statistical methods, but mortality review (MR) is better suited for routine use in clinical settings. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recently introduced MR into its HAI surveillance.AimWe evaluate validity and reproducibility of three MR measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVertical modeling: analysis of competing risks data with a cure fraction.
Lifetime Data Anal
January 2019
In this paper, we extend the vertical modeling approach for the analysis of survival data with competing risks to incorporate a cure fraction in the population, that is, a proportion of the population for which none of the competing events can occur. The proposed method has three components: the proportion of cure, the risk of failure, irrespective of the cause, and the relative risk of a certain cause of failure, given a failure occurred. Covariates may affect each of these components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF