Identifying and monitoring adverse effects (AEs) are integral to ensuring patient safety in clinical trials. Research sponsors and regulatory bodies have put into place a variety of policies and procedures to guide researchers in protecting patient safety during clinical trials. However, it remains unclear how these policies and procedures should be adapted for trials in implementation science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Recipients of health services value not only convenience but also respectful, kind, and helpful providers. To date, research to improve person-centred HIV treatment has focused on making services easier to access (eg, differentiated service delivery) rather than the interpersonal experience of care. We developed and evaluated a person-centred care (PCC) intervention targeting practices of health-care workers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF-Linked β--acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is an essential, dynamic monosaccharide post-translational modification (PTM) found on serine and threonine residues of thousands of nucleocytoplasmic proteins. The installation and removal of O-GlcNAc is controlled by a single pair of enzymes, O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and O-GlcNAcase (OGA), respectively. Since its discovery four decades ago, O-GlcNAc has been found on diverse classes of proteins, playing important functional roles in many cellular processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: While TB-related mortality in the US declined four-fold from 1990 to 2019, country-level estimates of TB burden obscure within-state racial heterogeneity and changes in TB burden over time. In sixteen US Southern States and Washington DC, the effects of health inequities engendered by Jim-Crow laws enacted from the late 1800s to the 1960s have not been evaluated for TB-related mortality. We, therefore, sought to compare TB mortality rates and annualized rate of change (AROC) between 1990 and 2019 in former Jim-Crow vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: HIV clinical guidelines recommend hypertension detection and management to lower cardiovascular disease risk, but these have not been effectively implemented for people living with HIV (PWH). Addressing this implementation gap requires community-engaged implementation studies focused on addressing implementation barriers specific to the HIV care context.
Methods: This protocol describes a type 2 effectiveness-implementation hybrid study conducted in nine primary care clinics in Johannesburg.
Background: This pilot study evaluates the effectiveness of mobile talk-time incentives in maintaining participation in a longitudinal mobile health (mHealth) data collection program among people living with HIV in Lusaka, Zambia. While mHealth tools, such as mobile phone surveys, provide vital health feedback, optimal incentive strategies to ensure long-term engagement remain limited. This study explores how different incentive levels affect response rates in multiple survey rounds, providing insights into effective methods for encouraging ongoing participation, especially in the context of Zambia's prepaid mobile system and multi-SIM usage, a common practice in sub-Saharan Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this issue of Molecular Cell, Yoshida et al. report an unconventional sugar-dependent ubiquitination event on Nrf1 that disrupts Nrf1 transcriptional activation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPINK1 loss-of-function mutations and exposure to mitochondrial toxins are causative for Parkinson's disease (PD) and Parkinsonism, respectively. We demonstrate that pathological α-synuclein deposition, the hallmark pathology of idiopathic PD, induces mitochondrial dysfunction, and impairs mitophagy as evidenced by the accumulation of the PINK1 substrate pS65-Ubiquitin (pUb). We discovered MTK458, a brain penetrant small molecule that binds to PINK1 and stabilizes its active complex, resulting in increased rates of mitophagy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Person-centred care (PCC) has been recognized as a critical element in delivering quality and responsive health services. The patient-provider relationship, conceptualized at the core of PCC in multiple models, remains largely unexamined in HIV care. We conducted a systematic review to better understand the types of PCC interventions implemented to improve patient-provider interactions and how these interventions have improved HIV care continuum outcomes and person-reported outcomes (PROs) among people living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: There is a paucity of comparative studies on the Peroneus longus tendon versus conventional hamstring autograft use in primary single-bundle ACL reconstruction. To date, there are no studies that reported donor ankle functional outcomes when a peroneus longus graft is harvested without performing a tenodesis to peroneus brevis.
Methods: A single-center retrospective comparative study was undertaken to evaluate the functional outcomes (IKDC & Tegner-Lysholm scores) of primary isolated single bundle anatomic ACL Reconstruction with Peroneus Longus tendon (PL group) versus Hamstring (HT group) autografts.
Doege-Potter syndrome occurs when incompletely processed insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF-2), also known as , is produced by a solitary fibrous tumor (SFT) and results in non-islet cell tumor hypoglycemia (NICTH). We discuss here the case of a 66-year-old male who presented with a 2-week history of increasing confusion and a serum glucose of 34 mg/dL. The patient's symptoms immediately improved with dextrose.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The impact of both implementation strategies (IS) and evidence-based interventions (EBI) can vary across contexts, and a better understanding of how and why this occurs presents fundamental but challenging questions that implementation science as a field will need to grapple with. We use causal epidemiologic methods to explore the mechanisms of why sharp distinctions between implementation strategies (IS) and efficacy of an evidence-based intervention (EBI) may fail to recognize that the effect of an EBI can be deeply intertwined and dependent on the context of the IS leading to its uptake.
Methods: We explore the use of instrumental variable (IV) analyses as a critical tool for implementation science methods to isolate three relevant quantities within the same intervention context when exposure to an implementation strategy is random: (1) the effect of an IS on implementation outcomes (e.
The global HIV response has made tremendous progress but is entering a new phase with additional challenges. Scientific innovations have led to multiple safe, effective, and durable options for treatment and prevention, and long-acting formulations for 2-monthly and 6-monthly dosing are becoming available with even longer dosing intervals possible on the horizon. The scientific agenda for HIV cure and remission strategies is moving forward but faces uncertain thresholds for success and acceptability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCD4 cell count at entry into human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care is a useful indicator of success of multiple steps in HIV public health programming. We demonstrate that CD4 cell count at care initiation was stable in St Louis between 2017 and 2019 but declined in 2020. Missouri efforts in the Ending the HIV Epidemic plan should focus on rapidly identifying individuals with undiagnosed HIV infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Implementation of patient-centred care (PCC) practices in HIV treatment depends on healthcare workers' (HCWs) perceptions of the acceptability, appropriateness and feasibility of such practices (e.g. use of intentional, metric-driven activities to improve patient experiences).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Poor client-provider communication is a critical barrier to long-term retention in care among people living with HIV. However, standardized assessments of this key metric are limited in Africa. We used the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS) to quantitatively characterize patterns of person-centred communication (PCC) behaviours in Zambia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To compare unannounced standardised patient approach (eg, mystery clients) with typical exit interviews for assessing patient experiences in HIV care (eg, unfriendly providers, long waiting times). We hypothesise standardised patients would report more negative experiences than typical exit interviews affected by social desirability bias.
Setting: Cross-sectional surveys in 16 government-operated HIV primary care clinics in Lusaka, Zambia providing antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Objectives: We sought to assess depression among healthcare workers (HCWs) in the context of COVID-19 in Lusaka Province, Zambia.
Design: This cross-sectional study is nested within a larger study, the Person-Centred Public Health for HIV Treatment in Zambia (PCPH), a cluster-randomised trial to assess HIV care and outcomes.
Setting: The research was conducted in 24 government-run health facilities from 11 August to 15 October 2020 during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lusaka, Zambia.
In many cases, implementation approaches (composed of one or more strategies) may need to change over time to work optimally. We use a literature review to inform a mechanistic analysis of such on-the-go adaptations. We suggest that such adaptations of implementation strategies consist of three necessary steps.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the response to the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa continues to mature, a growing number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) are aging and risk for non-communicable diseases increases. Routine laboratory tests of serum creatinine have been conducted to assess HIV treatment (ART) suitability. Here we utilize those measures to assess kidney function impairment among those initiating ART.
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