Dynamic joint stiffness is a dynamic, nonlinear relationship between the position of a joint and the torque acting about it, which can be used to describe the biomechanics of the joint and associated limb(s). This paper models and quantifies changes in ankle dynamic stiffness and its individual elements, intrinsic and reflex stiffness, in healthy human subjects during isometric, time-varying (T...

BACKGROUND Whether tenofovir nephrotoxicity is reversible after its withdrawal is unknown. Furthermore, there are no data on the viral efficacy of raltegravir (RAL) plus ritonavir-boosted Darunavir (DRV/r) in patients with suppressed viral load. METHODS This multicenter, randomized trial compared renal function and viral efficacy in patients with suppressed viral load treated with RAL+DRV/r a...

There is significant intra- and intersubject variability in lopinavir (LPV) plasma concentrations after standard dosing; thus, this prospective study was conducted to determine whether low plasma LPV concentrations could be associated with virological outcome throughout lopinavir-ritonavir maintenance monotherapy (mtLPVr) in the clinical practice setting. If this hypothesis would be confirmed, ...

BACKGROUND The National Study of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood (NSHPC) conducts comprehensive population-based surveillance of pregnancies in women with HIV infection in the United Kingdom/Ireland. Use of antepartum antiretroviral therapy (ART) for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) and to treat maternal infection, if required, is standard practise in this population; lopinavir/...

OBJECTIVE Atazanavir (ATV) and lopinavir (LPV) have been associated with kidney disease progression in HIV positive patients, with no data reported for darunavir (DRV). We examined kidney function in patients who switched their protease inhibitor from ATV or LPV to DRV. DESIGN Cohort study. METHODS Data were from the UK CHIC study. We compared pre and post switch estimated glomerular filtra...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the lifetime cost utility of two antiretroviral regimens (once-daily atazanavir plus ritonavir [ATV+r] versus twice-daily lopinavir/ritonavir [LPV/r]) in Italian human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients naïve to treatment. DESIGN With this observational retrospective study we collected the clinical data of a cohort of HIV-infected patients receiving first-lin...

In this paper, a leak detection and isolation methodology in pressurized water pipe networks is proposed. The methodology is based on computing residuals which are obtained comparing measured pressures (heads) in selected points of the network and their estimated values by means of an interval Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) model. The structure of the LPV models is obtained from the nonlinear m...

Many global identification approaches described in the literature for estimating linear parameter-varying (LPV) discrete-time state-space (SS) models with affine dependence on the scheduling parameter suffer heavily from the curse of dimensionality, making identification of moderate sized systems computationally intensive or infeasible. In this paper, we present a novel two-step approach to est...

This paper presents a numerically attractive approach to design reduced-order multi-objective H2/H∞ controllers for discrete-time linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems. The proposed controller synthesis approach relies on an a priori computed polynomially parameter-dependent fullorder LPV controller that stabilizes the LPV system for all possible parameter trajectories. This full-order control...

Abstract— In this paper we study the problem of H∞ control of linear parameter-varying (LPV) discrete-time systems with delays. In an LPV system, the state-space matrices are a function of time-varying parameters which are assumed to be real-time measurable. We utilize a parameter-dependent Lyapunov function to establish a delay-dependent H∞ performance condition for the LPV system with unknown...