Hearing impairment in children living with HIV in Haiti.

Objective: To identify the prevalence of hearing impairment and associated risk factors in children living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Haiti.

Methods: A validated smartphone-based platform with pure-tone audiometry was used to screen 341 HIV-infected children for hearing impairment in Port-au-Prince, Haiti from March 2019 to September 2020. If screening was failed, a more comprehensive pure-tone audiometric evaluation was administered.

Taking Free Flap Surgery Abroad: A Collaborative Approach to a Complex Surgical Problem.

Accessibility to health care, especially complex surgical care, represents one of the major health care disparities in developing countries. While surgical teams may be willing to travel to these areas to help address these needs, there are many logistical and ethical dilemmas inherent in this pursuit. We reviewed our approach to the establishment of the team-based surgical outreach program, wherein we perform head and neck free tissue transfer surgery in Haiti.

High-Affinity Copolymers Inhibit Digestive Enzymes by Surface Recognition.

This account presents a general method for the construction of polymeric surface binders for digestion enzymes. Two prominent parts, namely, the modification of the copolymer composition and the screening assay for the most powerful inhibitors are both amenable to parallelization. The concept hinges on the appropriate selection of amino-acid-selective comonomers, their free radical copolymerization, and subsequent screening of the resulting copolymer library for efficient enzyme inhibition.

Affinity polymers tailored for the protein A binding site of immunoglobulin G proteins.

Rational design in combination with a screening process was used to develop affinity polymers for a specific binding site on the surface of immunoglobulin G (IgG) proteins. The concept starts with the identification of critical amino acid residues on the protein interface and their topological arrangement. Appropriate binding monomers were subsequently synthesized.

The External RNA Controls Consortium: a progress report.

Standard controls and best practice guidelines advance acceptance of data from research, preclinical and clinical laboratories by providing a means for evaluating data quality. The External RNA Controls Consortium (ERCC) is developing commonly agreed-upon and tested controls for use in expression assays, a true industry-wide standard control.

Development of a DNA-labeling system for array-based comparative genomic hybridization.

Chromosomal amplifications and deletions are critical components of tumorigenesis and DNA copy-number variations also correlate with changes in mRNA expression levels. Genome-wide microarray comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) has become an important method for detecting and mapping chromosomal changes in tumors. Thus, the ability to detect twofold differences in fluorescent intensity between samples on microarrays depends on the generation of high-quality labeled probes.