Publications by authors named "Thorkild Tylleskar"

Background: The ambitious goal to eliminate new pediatric HIV infections by 2030 requires accelerated prevention strategies in high-risk settings such as South Africa. One approach could be pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with broadly neutralizing anti-HIV-1 monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs). The aim of our study is to define the optimal dose(s), the ideal combination(s) of bNAbs in terms of potency and breadth, and timing of subcutaneous (SC) administration(s) to prevent breast milk transmission of HIV.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Passive immunoprophylaxis with broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs) could be a game changer in the prevention of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) acquisition. The prevailing view is that available resources should be focused on identifying a fixed combination of at least three bNAbs for universal use in therapeutic and preventive protocols, regardless of target populations or routes of transmission. HIV transmission through breastfeeding is unique: it involves free viral particles and cell‐associated virus from breast milk and, in the case of acute/recent maternal infection, a viral population with restricted Env diversity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Transmission through breastfeeding accounts for more than half of the unacceptably high number of new paediatric HIV infections worldwide. We hypothesised that, in addition to maternal antiretroviral therapy (ART), extended postnatal prophylaxis with lamivudine, guided by point-of-care assays for maternal viral load, could reduce postnatal transmission.

Methods: We did a phase 3, open-label, randomised controlled trial at four health-care facilities in Zambia and four health-care facilities in Burkina Faso.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Wider healthcare-strengthening interventions are recommended in cholera hotspots and could benefit other types of diarrhoeal diseases which contribute to greater mortality than cholera.

Objective: Describe facility capacity and provider knowledge for case management of diarrhoea and cholera surveillance in cholera hotspots in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) among health facilities, drug shops, and traditional health practitioners.

Methods: We conducted a sequential exploratory mixed-method study, using focus group discussions, facility audits, and provider knowledge questionnaires during September and October 2022 in North Kivu and Tanganyika provinces, Eastern DRC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To assess the effect of an integrated intervention package compared with routine government health services on the frequency of health facility births.

Setting: Three subcounties of Lira district in Northern Uganda.

Design: A cluster randomised controlled trial where a total of 30 clusters were randomised in a ratio of 1:1 to intervention or standard of care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Our study aimed to assess the PMTCT indicators in Burkina Faso and Zambia using a patient-orientated innovative strategy based on the second visit in the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI-2) visit at 6-8 weeks.

Design: This was a cross sectional study.

Methods: We assessed women attending EPI-2 at primary healthcare facilities in Burkina Faso and Zambia with their children about their exposure to PMTCT interventions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Appropriately informing HIV-infected children of their diagnosis is a real challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Until now, there is no consensus on who ought to disclose and how to disclose. This paper describes the model for HIV status disclosure in which HIV-positive children/adolescents are informed about their diagnosis in a process conducted by young peers under healthcare worker (HCW) supervision in a hospital in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Infections are one of the leading causes of death in the neonatal period. This trial aims to evaluate if the provision of alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR) to pregnant women for postnatal household use prevents severe infections (including sepsis, diarrhoea, pneumonia, or death) among infants during the first three postnatal months.

Methods: Through a cluster-randomised trial in eastern Uganda, 72 clusters are randomised in a 2-arm design with rural villages as units of randomisation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

HIV status disclosure to children remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. For sociocultural reasons, parents often delay disclosure with subsequent risks to treatment compliance and the child’s psychological well-being. This article assesses the effects of HIV disclosure on second-line ART compliance after first-line failure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Annually, an estimated 20 million (13%) low-birthweight (LBW) and 15 million (11.1%) preterm infants are born worldwide. A paucity of data and reliance on hospital-based studies from low-income countries make it difficult to quantify the true burden of LBW and PB, the leading cause of neonatal and under-five mortality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Several approaches to the disclosure of HIV status to children and adolescents have been described. Each of these places particular emphasis on the role of parents and health care workers (HCWs) to mitigate the impact of disclosure on the adolescent without exploring the possible roles that other individuals might play in the process of disclosure. This article assesses the perceptions of adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) about disclosure done by parents, guardians, HCWs, peer educators in the role of peer supporters, accidentally or by self-discovery, and the subsequent effects of disclosure method on their mental health.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children show impaired health outcomes during childhood. A high rate of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) instability was reported in the blood of HEU at birth. We aimed to explore the relationship between these health outcomes and mtDNA deletions over time in a case series of 24 HEU children.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To compare coverage of key child health policy indicators across provinces and to explore their association with under-five mortality and level of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Methods: We made a secondary analysis of nationally representative data from 1380 health facilities and 20 792 households in 2017-2018. We analysed provincial-level data on coverage of 23 different indicators for improving common causes of childhood mortality, combined into mean scores for: newborn health, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and safe environment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Subclinical mastitis (SCM) is an important risk factor of postnatal HIV-1 transmission that is still poorly understood. A longitudinal sub-study of the ANRS12174 trial including 270 breastfeeding mothers in Lusaka, Zambia measured sodium (Na) and potassium (K) in archived paired breast milk samples collected at week 14, 26 and 38 postpartum to determine cumulative incidence of SCM and the effects of recurrent severe SCM on HIV-1 shedding in breast milk. A nested retrospective cohort study including 112 mothers was also done to determine longitudinal effects of SCM on four pro-inflammatory cytokines; IL6, IL8, IP10 and RANTES.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: We aimed to measure the prevalence of maternal HIV viral load (VL) non-suppression and assess associated factors, to evaluate progress towards United Nations-AIDS (UNAIDS) targets.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: The eight largest community health centres of Ehlanzeni, a rural district in northeast South Africa.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Monitoring of peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO) during neonatal resuscitation is standard of care in high-resource settings, but seldom performed in low-resource settings. We aimed to measure SpO and heart rate during the first 10 min of life in neonates receiving positive pressure ventilation (PPV) according to the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) protocol and compare results with SpO and heart rate targets set by the American Heart Association (AHA).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Mulago National Referral Hospital, Kampala, Uganda, as a substudy of the NeoSupra Trial.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Norwegian universities closed almost all on-campus activities on the 12 March 2020 following a lockdown decision of the Norwegian government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Online and digital teaching became the primary method of teaching. The goal of this study was to investigate how the transition to digital education impacted on medical students enrolled at the University of Bergen (UiB).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Understanding the missed opportunities in early infant HIV testing within the PMTCT program is essential to address any gaps. The study set out to describe the clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of the infants presenting late for early infant diagnosis in Kenya.

Methods: We abstracted routinely collected clinical and sociodemographic characteristics, in a cross-sectional study, on all HIV-infected infants with a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test from 1,346 President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) supported health facilities for the period October 2016 to September 2018.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Home delivery has been associated with mother-to-child transmission of HIV and remains high among HIV-infected women. Predictors for home delivery in the context of HIV have not been fully studied and understood in Northern Uganda. We therefore aimed to find out the incidence and risk factors for home delivery among women living with HIV in Lira, Northern Uganda.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In high-resource settings, postponing the interruption of cardiopulmonary resuscitation from 10 to 20 min after birth has been recently suggested, but data from low-resource settings are lacking. We investigated the outcome of newborns with Apgar scores of 0-1 at 10 min of resuscitative efforts in a low-resource setting.

Methods: This observational substudy from the NeoSupra trial included all 49 late preterm/full-term newborns with Apgar scores of 0-1 at 10 min of resuscitation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To evaluate the respiratory function of asphyxiated infants resuscitated with i-gel supraglottic airway (SGA) vs. face mask (FM) in a low-resource setting.

Methods: In this sub-study from the NeoSupra trial, respiratory function during the first 60 inflations was evaluated in 46 neonates (23 with SGA and 23 with FM) at the Mulago National Referral Hospital, Uganda.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Despite WHO guidelines recommending household contact investigation, and studies showing the impact of active screening, most tuberculosis (TB) programmes in resource-limited settings only carry out passive contact investigation. The cost of such strategies is often cited as barriers to their implementation. However, little data are available for the additional costs required to implement this strategy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Neonatal mortality, often due to birth asphyxia, remains stubbornly high in sub-Saharan Africa. Guidelines for neonatal resuscitation, where achieving adequate positive pressure ventilation (PPV) is key, have been implemented in low-resource settings. However, the actual clinical practices of neonatal resuscitation have rarely been examined in these settings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_session010v80f7u2o7th4hvq2h6sch2qpsk026): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once