BACKGROUND In countries with high rates of chronic HBV, the World Health Organization recommends screening all HIV-infected adults for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) before initiating antiretroviral therapy (ART), and starting HIV-HBV-coinfected patients on regimens containing lamivudine (3TC) or emtricitabine (FTC) plus tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF). Here, we estimated the prevalenc...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES We evaluated hepatitis B virus (HBV) serological markers by novel, quantitative immunoassays in order to study their behaviours and possible role in the various phases of HBV infection. STUDY DESIGN The quantitative determination of HBsAg and anti-HBc/IgM by chemiluminescent immunoassays (Abbott Architect) and the calculation of anti-HBc avidity index have been carri...

A recently proposed mechanism of protection for haemoglobin C (HbC; beta6Glu-->Lys) links an abnormal display of PfEMP1, an antigen involved in malaria pathogenesis, on the surface of HbC infected erythrocytes together with the observation of reduced cytoadhesion of parasitized erythrocytes and impaired rosetting in vitro. We investigated the impact of this hypothesis on the development of acqu...

The present study was designed to assess the risk of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection among hospital employees, who often contract the infection before the beginning of their employment, and to suggest a prevention strategy. The study population consisted of 2518 subjects working or studying at the two Hadassah University hospitals, on Mount Scopus and at Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. The total prev...

Glycated hemoglobin is widely used in the management of diabetes mellitus. At least 300,000 Americans with diabetes mellitus have the hemoglobin (Hb) C or S trait. The accuracy of HbA1c methods can be adversely affected by the presence of these traits. We evaluated the effects of HbC and HbS traits on the results of 14 commercial HbA1c methods that use boronate affinity, enzymatic, immunoassay,...

The chemical nature of the edge periphery essentially determines the physical properties of graphene. As a molecular-level model system, large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, that is, so-called nanographenes, can be chemically modified through either edge functionalization or doping with heteroatoms. Although the synthetic methods for edge substitution are well-developed, incorporation with h...

Tests by counter-immunoelectrophoresis for antibody to hepatitis B core antigen (anti-HBc) were introduced into a routine testing programme for evidence of hepatitis B virus infection. Samples tested for anti-HBc were selected on the basis of the results of tests for HBsAg and clinical details. The sensitivity and specificity of the test were assessed and correlations made with the presence of ...

The presence of serological markers for hepatitis B virus (HBsAg, anti-HBc IgM and Anti-HBc total) was investigated in the serum of 1,396 individuals who had clinical suspect of hepatitis. It was observed that 50.7% of the individuals were positive and, from the total of the studied individuals, 14.5% were positive for HBsAg. From these, 8.5% were also positive for anti-HBc IgM. The analysis in...

Text classification, the grouping of texts into several clusters, has been used as a means of improving both the efficiency and the effectiveDess of text retrieval/categorization In this paper we propose a hierarchical clustering algor i thm that constructs a Bet of clusters having the maximum Bayesian posterior probability, the probability that the given texts are classified into clusters We c...

Constraints on marine phosphate availability and cycling directly inform our understanding of long-term biological evolution. However, early Earth records are sparse, biased toward siliciclastic samples, susceptible to post-depositional modification. Well-preserved shallow inorganic carbonate precipitates provide a complementary yet understudied record cycling. We combined micro-X-ray fluoresce...