Outcomes of substance use and sexual power among adolescent girls and young women in Cape Town: Implications for structural and cultural differences.

Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in South Africa experience contextual barriers to HIV risk reduction including incomplete schooling, unintended pregnancy, substance use, and gender-based violence. A cluster randomised trial in Cape Town allocated 24 Black and Coloured communities to a gender-focused HIV risk-reduction intervention or HIV testing, with 500 AGYW total enrolled. We evaluated intervention efficacy by comparing mean differences overall, by community population group (Black and Coloured) and among those with structural barriers based on neighbourhood, education, and employment (n = 406).

Effective low-dose escalation of indocyanine green for near-infrared fluorescent sentinel lymph node mapping in melanoma.

Background: Regional lymph node metastasis is the strongest prognostic factor in patients with melanoma. Published reports that used lymphoscintigraphy with radioactive colloids and blue dye demonstrated accurate sentinel lymph node (SLN) identification in inguinal nodes and axillary nodes, but decreased accuracy in cervical, popliteal, epitrochlear, and parascapular nodes. Near-infrared imaging (NIR) may utilize indocyanine green (ICG) to improve SLN identification.

Establishment of antitumor memory in humans using in vitro-educated CD8+ T cells.

Although advanced-stage melanoma patients have a median survival of less than a year, adoptive T cell therapy can induce durable clinical responses in some patients. Successful adoptive T cell therapy to treat cancer requires engraftment of antitumor T lymphocytes that not only retain specificity and function in vivo but also display an intrinsic capacity to survive. To date, adoptively transferred antitumor CD8(+) T lymphocytes (CTLs) have had limited life spans unless the host has been manipulated.