Genital hygiene behaviors and practices: A cross-sectional descriptive study among antenatal care attendees.

The female genital tracts harbor a wide variety of microorganisms' knowns as microflora mostly constituted by lactobacilli, involved in the healthy state of the vagina without causing infection. Urinary tract infections (UTI) are frequent in pregnant women due to physiological and anatomical changes that occur during pregnancy. These infections can result to disabilities or serious health problems both for the mother and the new-born.

Four sensitive thyrotropin assays critically evaluated and compared.

We compared four sensitive procedures for thyrotropin (TSH)--Corning's Magic-Lite, ElectroNucleonics' Delfia, Baxter's Stratus, Nichols' Allegro--for their ability to completely discriminate TSH concentrations in sera in euthyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and hypothyroidism. We evaluated the analytical and clinical performance of these procedures according to previously published criteria. All procedures we examined fulfilled the criterion stipulating less than 1% overlap between the assay variation at the lower normal range limit and the assay sensitivity.