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Gestational age at CMV infection and outcome of vertical transmission : evaluation through the IGG avidity determination in neonatal blood
No full textDeterminazione degli anticorpi neutralizzanti anti-CMV in donatori di sangue della regione Lombardia
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Diagnosis of congenital cytomegalovirus infection by detection of viral DNA in urine pools
No full textHuman cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most frequent cause of congenital infection. Diagnosis of this infection is important because 5-17% of asymptomatic infected babies will develop late sequelae and should be followed closely. Most of these children will remain undetected, since screening of all newborns by viral culture is too expensive. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that pool testing could be used to detect HCMV congenital infection in newborns. For this purpose, a nested-PCR technique was tested in urine pools. In phase 1, urine specimens were tested alone by nested-PCR and compared with viral culture, followed by cross experiments to test the reliability of detecting one positive specimen in a 20 samples in a urine pool. In phase 2, this pool method was applied to all urine specimens from children received in the virology laboratory of the Centro Hospitalar Cova da Beira for diagnosis of HCMV infection, between January 2002 and March 2003. In phase 1, 74 urine specimens were tested simultaneously by shell-vial culture and nested-PCR; 17 were positive and the remaining 57 negative by both methods. The negative specimens were divided into three pools and each pool was tested alone and crossed with each of the positive specimens by nested-PCR. Although the three pools were negative when tested alone, all 51 crossed results were positive. In phase 2, 15 out of the 180 urine samples tested positive by shell-vial culture and were detected by this pool method. These results suggest that urine pools can be used to detect HCMV positive urines in children, with similar sensitivity and specificity when compared with the standard method, but with a substantial labour reduction. This significant reduction in labour and consequently in cost per test, opens the possibility of applying PCR to urine pools for screening the HCMV congenital infection in newborns
Congenital CMV infection in HIV-infected women on HAART
No full textBackground – The introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART/HAART) has modified both the natural history of HIV disease and the epidemiology of CMV disease in HIV patients by lowering the rate of CMV reactivation. Anti retroviral therapy is recommended in HIV infected women in order to reduce the risk of vertical transmission of HIV.
Objective – To verify whether ART/HAART can have some preventive effect also on the vertical transmission of CMV
Design – Retrospective survey of congenital CMV infection in a cohort of HIV infected pregnant women on ART/HAART .
Materials and methods – We examined 303 consecutive children born in the years 2000-2005. The mothers received lamivudine plus zidovudine since week 22 (13-38) of pregnancy; from 2003 a protease inhibitor was added to the treatment; their CMV serological status was assessed at first visit, HIV viral load and CD4/CD8 counts were measured at delivery. All newborns were screened for congenital CMV infection by means of viral isolation and/or CMV PCR on saliva samples collected in the first 3 days of life. Urine and PBL of infected babies were examined in the following days and at clinical follow-up visits.
Results – Vertical transmission of CMV occurred in 9 cases (2.97%), HIV was transmitted in two other babies only (0.6%). Four of the CMV infected children were premature, one of them was symptomatic at birth, one developed a monolateral hearing loss at age 4. None of the term babies was symptomatic at birth nor has developed any sequela so far. Only the mother of the symptomatic girl had a positive IgM test, all the other transmitting mothers were IgG+/IgM- in pregnancy.
Conclusions – 1)Congenital CMV rate is about 10 times higher than in the open Italian population (0.2%), but lower than the one (5.7%) found in a previous Italian study on babies born to HIV infected mothers; 2) The lower rate of transmission might be due to the reduction of CMV reactivation caused by ART/HAART
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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