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    HIV infection and AIDS in newborn babies of mothers positive for HIV antibody

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    2/3 of the reported cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in children have no risk factor except a mother belonging to a group with an increased prevalence of infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). There is evidence of transplacental passage of the virus during early and late gestation, but the incidence of fetal and neonatal infection in newborn babies of seropositive mothers has not yet been determined. This article presents the clinical and serological outcome of 24 babies aged 6 months born to mothers who were drug addicts and positive for HIV antibodies. At 6 months 12 babies were seropositive and 12 seronegative. 1 seropositive baby died of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 4 months, and another was diagnosed as suffering from AIDS related complex at the age of 3 months. All the other babies thrived, the results of their follow up being entirely normal. These 2 cases indicate that early morbidity and mortality are a severe problem, but their incidence seems to be restricted to about 10% of the offspring. Unfortunately, nothing can yet be said about long term morbidity and mortality. Cesarean section does not seem to protect the fetus from infection. These data may be helpful in counselling seropositive women before or in early gestation, as they suggest that the risk of fetal infection and severe postnatal morbidity is high. Unfavorable perinatal outcome, usually associated with drug addiction, was similar in seropositive and seronegative women: a detrimental effect of the virus in this regard was not evident

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Treatment with interferon for genital HPV in HIV-positive and HIV-negative women

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    The administration of interferons can be resorted to, either on its own or in combination with physical destruction methods, when the extent of genital HPV is widespread. Extensive genital HPV involvement is often seen in HIV-positive patients as a consequence of their immunodeficiency. The extension of these lesions may invalidate treatment by physical destruction, while an underlying immunodeficiency renders interferon therapy less efficacious. We studied HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients with a similar HPV involvement of their genital tract and compared the effectiveness of systemically administered alpha 2b and beta interferons in clearing HPV. Our results confirm that interferon therapy will cure most patients with extensive genital HPV when they are HIV-negative. HIV-positive patients with CD4 counts over 400 lymphocytes/mm3 may expect a similar cure rate, but this halves when this critical threshold is crossed. In these severely immunodeficient patients repeated courses of interferon therapy alone or in combination with physical destruction methods may be required to cure HPV infection
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