Interventions that retain African Americans in HIV/AIDS treatment: implications for social work practice and research.

Social workers play an important role in recognizing and addressing barriers to retention in HIV care. Although there is a large body of literature and research supporting interventions that promote medication adherence, there is limited intervention research that addresses retention in care, the precursor to adherence. Despite many advances in HIV treatment, many African Americans are not engaged in regular care.

Heterogeneity of depolymerized heparin SEC fractions: to pool or not to pool?

In the structural analysis of heparin and heparan sulfate, it is customary to combine or pool like-sized fractions obtained by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) of enzymatically derived heparin oligosaccharides. In this study, we examine the heterogeneity of preparative-scale SEC fractions obtained from enzymatic digests of porcine intestinal mucosa heparin. Each fraction was profiled by capillary electrophoresis with UV detection (CE-UV) using a 60 mM formic acid running buffer at pH 3.

Ultraperformance ion-pair liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray time-of-flight mass spectrometry for compositional profiling and quantification of heparin and heparan sulfate.

Heparin and heparan sulfate (HS) are important pharmaceutical targets because they bind a large number of proteins, including growth factors and cytokines, mediating many biological processes. Because of their biological significance and complexity, there is a need for development of rapid and sensitive analytical techniques for the characterization and compositional analysis of heparin and HS at the disaccharide level, as well as for the structure elucidation of larger glycosaminoglycan (GAG) sequences important for protein binding. In this work, we present a rapid method for analysis of disaccharide composition using reversed-phase ion-pairing ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray time-of-flight mass spectrometry ((RPIP)-UPLC-MS).