Safety profile of antiretroviral therapy: An urgent need for monitoring

Monitoring adherence to antiretroviral treatment in Brazil: an urgent challenge.

The aim of this study was to describe the effect of non-adherence on the main laboratory outcomes, TCD4+ lymphocyte count and viral load, routinely used to monitor patients initiating treatment according to three different approaches to measure adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Among 288 participants, 22.9%, 31.9% and 74.3% were considered non-adherent, according to medical charts, self-repo...

Female condoms, an urgent need.

Aldosterone assays: an urgent need for improvement.

It should not be forgotten that the concentration of aldosterone in plasma is only 1 thousandth that of cortisol. In this issue of Clinical Chemistry, Schirpenbach et al. (1 ) draw much-needed attention to current problems with measurement of aldosterone. The issue is extremely important in clinical practice after recognition that primary aldosteronism is a much more common cause of hypertensio...

Urgent Need for Standardization

O ver the last 20 years, important advances have been made in the clinical use of oral anticoagulants and in our understanding of their mechanism of action. Clinical trials have demonstrated that oral anticoagulants are effective antithrombotic agents,' that the incidence of bleeding is influenced strongly by the intensity of the anticoagulant effect,2-S and that for many clinical indications t...

The Mechanisms of Cell Therapy for Clinical Investigations: An Urgent Need for Large-Animal Models