Loss to follow-up in a community clinic in South Africa--roles of gender, pregnancy and CD4 count.

Background: Faith-based organisations have expanded antiretroviral therapy (ART) in community clinics across South Africa. Loss to follow-up (LTFU), however, limits the potential individual and population treatment benefits and optimal care.

Objective: To identify patient characteristics associated with LTFU 6 months after starting ART in a large community clinic.

Assessing language and visuospatial functions with one task: a "dual use" approach to performing fMRI in children.

In order to increase the rate of successful functional MR studies in children it is helpful to shorten the time spent in the scanner. To this effect, assessing two cognitive functions with one task seems to be a promising approach. The hypothesis of this study was that the control condition of an established language task (vowel identification task, VIT) requires visuospatial processing and that the control condition (VIT(CC)) therefore may also be applicable to localize visuospatial functions.

Mouse models of cystic fibrosis: phenotypic analysis and research applications.

Genetically modified mice have been studied for more than fifteen years as models of cystic fibrosis (CF). The large amount of experimental data generated illuminates the complex multi-organ pathology of CF and raises new questions relevant to human disease. CF mice have also been used to test experimental therapies prior to clinical trials.

Manual, semi-automated, and automated delineation of chronic brain lesions: a comparison of methods.

The exact delineation of chronic brain lesions is a crucial step when investigating the relationship between brain structure and (dys-)function. For this, manual tracing, although very time-consuming, is still the gold standard. In order to assess the possible contributions from other methods, we compared manual tracing of lesion boundaries with a newly developed semi-automated and a fully automated approach for lesion definition in a sample of chronic stroke patients (n=11, 5m, median age 12, range 10-30years).

Treatment and prophylaxis of invasive candidiasis with anidulafungin, caspofungin and micafungin and its impact on use and costs: review of the literature.

Invasive fungal infections are on the rise. Echinocandins are a relatively new class of antifungal drugs that act by inhibition of a key enzyme necessary for integrity of the fungal cell wall. Currently there are three available agents: caspofungin, micafungin and anidulafungin.

Language comprehension vs. language production: age effects on fMRI activation.

Normal language acquisition is a process that unfolds with amazing speed primarily in the first years of life. However, the refinement of linguistic proficiency is an ongoing process, extending well into childhood and adolescence. An increase in lateralization and a more focussed productive language network have been suggested to be the neural correlates of this process.

Relationship between functional connectivity and sensory impairment: red flag or red herring?

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used to study the functional connectivity in the somatosensory system. However, the relationship between sensory network connectivity, sensory deficits, and structural abnormality remains poorly understood. Previously, we investigated the motor network in children with congenital hemiparesis due to middle cerebral artery strokes (MCA, n = 6) or periventricular lesions (PL, n = 8).

Clinical functional MRI of the language domain in children with epilepsy.

Functional MRI (fMRI) for the assessment of language functions is increasingly used in the diagnostic workup of patients with epilepsy. Termed "clinical fMRI," such an approach is also feasible in children who may display specific patterns of language reorganization. This study was aimed at assessing language reorganization in pediatric epilepsy patients, using fMRI.

Multiresistant bacteria and current therapy - the economical side of the story.

Unlabelled: Severe infections with multiresistant bacteria (MRB) are a medical challenge and a financial burden for hospitals. The adequate antibiotic therapy is a key issue in multiresistant bacteria management. Several major cost drivers have been identified.

Pharmaco-economic evaluation of antibiotic therapy strategies in DRG-based healthcare systems - a new approach.

The cost of treatments especially in conditions where multiresistant bacteria are involved are a major issue in times where in most developed countries in the world payment systems based on diagnoses-related-groups (DRG) are in place. There is great evidence that especially the length of stay in hospital (LOS), the time in the intensive care unit (ICU-days) and the hours of mechanical ventilation (HMV) are major cost drivers. - While established methods of pharmacoeconomical analyses focus on the efficiency of drugs from healthcare system perspective, these data are often not sufficient for improving treatment strategies in a given hospital context.

Modeling the National Ignition Facility neutron imaging system.

Numerical modeling of the neutron imaging system for the National Ignition Facility (NIF), forward from calculated target neutron emission to a camera image, will guide both the reduction of data and the future development of the system. Located 28 m from target chamber center, the system can produce two images at different neutron energies by gating on neutron arrival time. The brighter image, using neutrons near 14 MeV, reflects the size and symmetry of the implosion "hot spot.

Progress toward the development and testing of source reconstruction methods for NIF neutron imaging.

Development of analysis techniques for neutron imaging at the National Ignition Facility is an important and difficult task for the detailed understanding of high-neutron yield inertial confinement fusion implosions. Once developed, these methods must provide accurate images of the hot and cold fuels so that information about the implosion, such as symmetry and areal density, can be extracted. One method under development involves the numerical inversion of the pinhole image using knowledge of neutron transport through the pinhole aperture from Monte Carlo simulations.

Visual cortex abnormalities in adults with ADHD: a structural MRI study.

Objectives: Most structural imaging studies in ADHD have focused on prefronto-striatal circuits. However, findings remained inconsistent while recent reports point to the posterior parietal cortex as an additional target for research. Moreover, although adult ADHD clinically differs from the childhood presentation little is known about the structural correlates of ADHD in adults.

A confocal set-up for micro-XRF and XAFS experiments using diamond-anvil cells.

A confocal set-up is presented that improves micro-XRF and XAFS experiments with high-pressure diamond-anvil cells (DACs). In this experiment a probing volume is defined by the focus of the incoming synchrotron radiation beam and that of a polycapillary X-ray half-lens with a very long working distance, which is placed in front of the fluorescence detector. This set-up enhances the quality of the fluorescence and XAFS spectra, and thus the sensitivity for detecting elements at low concentrations.

Are recommended phototherapy thresholds safe enough for extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants? A report on 2 ELBW infants with kernicterus despite only moderate hyperbilirubinemia.

Two extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants developed characteristic signs of kernicterus at 4 and 8 months corrected age despite only moderate neonatal hyperbilirubinemia (peak serum bilirubin <10 g/dl) and phototherapy being applied according to current guidelines. Both girls were from twin pregnancies and had fetal complications (donor in a twin-twin transfusion syndrome and acardius-acranius malformation in the second twin, respectively), connatal anemia (initial hematocrit 30%), and mild acidosis after birth. They had been neurologically normal at discharge except for abnormal otoacustic emissions (OAE).

Blindsight depends on the lateral geniculate nucleus.

Injury to the primary visual cortex (V1) leads to the loss of visual experience. Nonetheless, careful testing shows that certain visually guided behaviours can persist even in the absence of visual awareness. The neural circuits supporting this phenomenon, which is often termed blindsight, remain uncertain.

Pulvinar inactivation disrupts selection of movement plans.

The coordinated movement of the eyes and hands under visual guidance is an essential part of goal-directed behavior. Several cortical areas known to be involved in this process exchange projections with the dorsal aspect of the thalamic pulvinar nucleus, suggesting that this structure may play a central role in visuomotor behavior. Here, we used reversible inactivation to investigate the role of the dorsal pulvinar in the selection and execution of visually guided manual and saccadic eye movements in macaque monkeys.

Osteopenia in Cftr-deltaF508 mice.

Background: Mice with the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (Cftr) gene knocked out develop osteopenia. To determine whether this phenotype is present in cystic fibrosis mouse models with the DeltaF508 Cftr mutation we assessed the femora of adult FVB/N Cftr(tm1Eur) and C57BL/6 Cftr(tm1Kth) mice.

Methods: Bone disease, relative to littermate controls, was measured using histology, densitometry and quantitative imaging.

Why one task is not enough: functional MRI for atypical language organization in two children.

Functional MRI is increasingly used to determine the hemispheric dominance for language. This is especially relevant in children who may not be able to comply with the high demands of a Wada test. We here report on two children in which the full extent of language reorganization was only determined when two fMRI tasks were analyzed; in the first case, the results from the second task corroborated the shifted hemispheric dominance seen in the first task.

Papillary intralymphatic angioendothelioma of the thigh: A case report and review of the literature.

The term angiosarcoma, encompasses several neoplasms, all of which exhibit a malignant process derived from endothelial cells of the vessels. The most common form of angiosarcoma is highly aggressive, often fatal, and usually affects the head and neck region of elderly white men. Other low-grade forms of angiosarcoma, including papillary intralymphatic angioendothelioma, also known as Dabska tumor, are less invasive, affect a wider age range, and offer a better prognosis.

Lateralization of cognitive functions after stroke in childhood.

Rationale: A child's brain shows a remarkable ability to recover from adverse events such as stroke. Language functions recover particularly well, while visuo-spatial skills are more affected by brain damage, regardless of its localization. This study investigated the lateralization of language and visual search after childhood stroke.

Correction of the Delta phe508 cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator trafficking defect by the bioavailable compound glafenine.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene, which encodes a cAMP-activated anion channel expressed in epithelial cells. The most common mutation Delta Phe508 leads to protein misfolding, retention by the endoplasmic reticulum, and degradation. One promising therapeutic approach is to identify drugs that have been developed for other indications but that also correct the CFTR trafficking defect, thereby exploiting their known safety and bioavailability in humans and reducing the time required for clinical development.

Microcephaly with simplified gyral pattern: MRI classification.

Objectives: To develop subjective (visual) and objective (morphometric) rating scales for the classification of MRI in infants who had microcephaly with a simplified gyral pattern (MSGP) and to validate the first by the latter.

Methods: We compared the MRI of 12 patients with MSGP and of 5 term-born control infants. Visual rating and morphometric analysis was performed for gyration and associated brain abnormalities of basal ganglia, lateral ventricles, pons, cerebellum, and corpus callosum.

The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is expressed in maturation stage ameloblasts, odontoblasts and bone cells.

Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) have mild defects in dental enamel. The gene mutated in these patients is CFTR, a Cl(-) channel involved in transepithelial salt and water transport and bicarbonate secretion. We tested the hypothesis that Cftr channels are present and operating in the plasma membranes of mouse ameloblasts.