1,720,959 research outputs found
HIV/Malaria co-infection: Effect of HIV infection on antimalarial treatment outcomes in children in Zambia
No full textChildren co-infected with HIV-1 and malaria are more likely to suffer from malaria and may respond poorly to anti-malarial treatment due to immunosuppression resulting from HIV infection. This study provides results of antimalarial treatment outcomes in children co-infected with HIV and malaria. The study was a health facility based case control study and was conducted between December 2006 and October 2007. One hundred and twenty four children were recruited from five study sites with stable and unstable malaria transmission patterns. Among the 124 children recruited, 9 had HIV-1 and malaria co-infections (cases) while 113 were non-HIV-1 and malaria infected (controls). Treatment was according to the Zambian government malaria treatment policy guidelines; thus Quinine for complicated malaria and Artemether Lumefantrine (Coartem) for uncomplicated malaria. All the children recruited were followed-up for 28 days. Eighty children completed the day 28 follow-up. Clinical assessment and malaria parasite examination were done on each day of the visit while samples for PCR were collected on day 14 and any day thereafter if the patient was malaria positive by blood slide. Molecular genotyping was used to distinguish re-infection parasites from recrudescent parasites. Data was analyzed with SPSS version 11.0. Chi-square test was used to test for significant differences of baseline data among the two groups and the difference in means was measured with the unpaired t-test. Tests of significance could not be performed on treatment outcomes because of the low numbers of patients in the case group. Out of the 80 children who completed day 28 follow-up, 8 were cases and 72 were controls. The mean haemoglobin levels among children in the case and control groups at baseline was 6.62 ±2.71 and 9.55±2.40 respectively (p-value <0.05). The parasite count geometric means for the case and control groups were 11501 and 7550 respectively. The mean CD4 counts for the children in the case group 356± 138.47 while the control had 1171.86±445.18 (p-value <0.05). Fifty percent of the cases presented with complicated malaria upon recruitment as compared to 6.9% in the controls. A total of 16 post treatment positive samples were recorded of which 4 were positive by both microscopy and 12 were positive by PCR only. In order to distinguish re-infection parasites from recrudescent, all the 16 positive post treatment samples were genotyped. Out of the 16 post treatment malaria positive samples recorded, 5 (31.3%) were due to re-infections and 10 (62.5%) were recrudescents. Recrudescent parasites were seen in 6.2% and 62.5% of the cases and controls respectively. Treatment failure rates within the case and control groups were I (12.5%) and 10 (13.8%) respectively. Our study has documented higher parasitaemia and prevalence of severe malaria among HIV-1 malaria co-infected children. However, the study findings have shown that the risk of developing treatment failure is less likely among children with severe immunosuppression as seen in HIV malaria infected children. These results may not be significant and conclusive due to a number of factors including the low prevalence rates of HIV and malaria co-infections and small study sample size
HIV/Malaria co-infection: Effect of HIV infection on antimalarial treatment outcomes in children in Zambia
No full textChildren co-infected with HIV-1 and malaria are more likely to suffer from malaria and may respond poorly to anti-malarial treatment due to immunosuppression resulting from HIV infection. This study provides results of antimalarial treatment outcomes in children co-infected with HIV and malaria. The study was a health facility based case control study and was conducted between December 2006 and October 2007. One hundred and twenty four children were recruited from five study sites with stable and unstable malaria transmission patterns. Among the 124 children recruited, 9 had HIV-1 and malaria co-infections (cases) while 113 were non-HIV-1 and malaria infected (controls). Treatment was according to the Zambian government malaria treatment policy guidelines; thus Quinine for complicated malaria and Artemether Lumefantrine (Coartem) for uncomplicated malaria. All the children recruited were followed-up for 28 days. Eighty children completed the day 28 follow-up. Clinical assessment and malaria parasite examination were done on each day of the visit while samples for PCR were collected on day 14 and any day thereafter if the patient was malaria positive by blood slide. Molecular genotyping was used to distinguish re-infection parasites from recrudescent parasites. Data was analyzed with SPSS version 11.0. Chi-square test was used to test for significant differences of baseline data among the two groups and the difference in means was measured with the unpaired t-test. Tests of significance could not be performed on treatment outcomes because of the low numbers of patients in the case group. Out of the 80 children who completed day 28 follow-up, 8 were cases and 72 were controls. The mean haemoglobin levels among children in the case and control groups at baseline was 6.62 ±2.71 and 9.55±2.40 respectively (p-value <0.05). The parasite count geometric means for the case and control groups were 11501 and 7550 respectively. The mean CD4 counts for the children in the case group 356± 138.47 while the control had 1171.86±445.18 (p-value <0.05). Fifty percent of the cases presented with complicated malaria upon recruitment as compared to 6.9% in the controls. A total of 16 post treatment positive samples were recorded of which 4 were positive by both microscopy and 12 were positive by PCR only. In order to distinguish re-infection parasites from recrudescent, all the 16 positive post treatment samples were genotyped. Out of the 16 post treatment malaria positive samples recorded, 5 (31.3%) were due to re-infections and 10 (62.5%) were recrudescents. Recrudescent parasites were seen in 6.2% and 62.5% of the cases and controls respectively. Treatment failure rates within the case and control groups were I (12.5%) and 10 (13.8%) respectively. Our study has documented higher parasitaemia and prevalence of severe malaria among HIV-1 malaria co-infected children. However, the study findings have shown that the risk of developing treatment failure is less likely among children with severe immunosuppression as seen in HIV malaria infected children. These results may not be significant and conclusive due to a number of factors including the low prevalence rates of HIV and malaria co-infections and small study sample size
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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