Background: People living with HIV (PLHIV) have an increased risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB). To reduce the burden of TB among PLHIV, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends systematic TB screening followed by (1) confirmatory TB testing for all who screen positive and (2) TB preventive therapy (TPT) for all TPT-eligible PLHIV who screen negative. Symptom-based screening remains the standard of care in most high TB burden settings, including Uganda. Despite having high sensitivity for active TB among antiretroviral-naïve PLHIV, symptom screening has poor specificity; as such, many high-risk PLHIV without active TB are not referred for TPT. C-reactive protein (CRP) is a promising alternative strategy for TB screening that has comparable sensitivity and higher specificity than symptom screening, and was endorsed by WHO in 2021. However, the impact of CRP-based TB screening on TB burden for PLHIV remains unclear.
Methods: TB SCRIPT (TB Screening Improves Preventive Therapy Uptake) is a phase 3, multi-center, single-blinded, individual (1:1) randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of CRP-based TB screening on clinical outcomes of PLHIV. The trial aims to compare the effectiveness of a TB screening strategy based on CRP levels using a point-of-care (POC) assay on 2-year TB incidence and all-cause mortality (composite primary trial endpoint) and prevalent TB case detection and uptake of TPT (intermediate outcomes), relative to symptom-based TB screening (current practice).
Discussion: This study will be critical to improving selection of eligible PLHIV for TPT and helping guide the scale-up and integration of TB screening and TPT activities. This work will enable the field to improve TB screening by removing barriers to TPT initiation among eligible PLHIV, and provide randomized evidence to inform and strengthen WHO guidelines.
Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04557176. Registered on September 21, 2020.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-022-06371-0 | DOI Listing |
Hernia
January 2025
Department of Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1259, New York, NY, 10029, USA.
Purpose: While surgeons agree that perioperative field blocks should be performed for open inguinal hernia surgery, there lacks consensus in the minimally invasive context. Prior small-scale randomized trials study pain scores only up to 24 h postoperatively. Thus, we sought to investigate the analgesic benefits of a bupivacaine transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block in the first 4 postoperative days.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Nutr Rep
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Department of Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
Purpose Of Review: This review aims to determine whether muscle mass and function can be effectively maintained without relying on animal-based protein sources. We evaluate the quality, digestibility, and essential amino acid profiles of plant-based proteins to understand their potential in preventing and managing sarcopenia.
Recent Finding: Recent studies indicate that while animal-based proteins have traditionally been considered the gold standard for supporting muscle protein synthesis, certain plant-based protein blends, fortified with leucine or other essential amino acids, can produce comparable anabolic responses.
Ann Med
December 2025
Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University Medicine Faculty, Zonguldak, Türkiye.
Background: Although both the lateral sagittal and costoclavicular approaches are applied at the cord level in the infraclavicular region, there is a major difference between the distributions of the two approaches. We aimed to investigate the effects of this different distribution on tissue perfusion and oxygenation.
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Microb Biotechnol
January 2025
Department of Animal Biotechnology, Dankook University, Cheonan, Korea.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a fatal disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). To date, several vaccines have been developed to combat the spread of this virus. Mucosal vaccines using food-grade bacteria, such as Lactobacillus spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNucleic Acids Res
January 2025
SynVaccine Ltd, Ramat Hachayal, 3 Golda Meir Street, Science Park, Nes Ziona 7403648, Israel.
Many viruses of the Flaviviridae family, including the Zika virus (ZIKV), are human pathogens of significant public health concerns. Despite extensive research, there are currently no approved vaccines available for ZIKV and specifically no live-attenuated Zika vaccine. In this current study, we suggest a novel computational algorithm for generating live-attenuated vaccines via the introduction of silent mutation into regions that undergo selection for strong or weak local RNA folding or into regions that exhibit medium levels of sequence conservation.
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