Over the past 10 years, the Peruvian National Tuberculosis (TB) Program, the National Reference Laboratory (NRL), Socios en Salud, and US partners have worked to strengthen the national TB laboratory network to support treatment of multidrug-resistant TB. We review key lessons of this experience. The preparation phase involved establishing criteria for drug susceptibility testing (DST), selecti...

Severe storms (Dst) and Forbush decreases (FD) during cycle 23 showed that maximum negative Dst magnitudes usually occurred almost simultaneously with the maximum negative values of the Bz component of interplanetary magnetic field B, but the maximum magnitudes of negative Dst and Bz were poorly correlated (+0.28). A parameter Bz(CP) was calculated (cumulative partial Bz) as sum of the hourly n...

BACKGROUND Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is being recognized as a complication contributing to perioperative morbidity and mortality of the elderly. We hypothesized that the use of the shorter-acting volatile anaesthetic desflurane would be associated with less incidence of POCD when compared with sevoflurane. METHODS Approved by the local ethical committee, 80 patients (aged 65-...

Rapid line probe assay (LPA) can be a practical and rapid alternative to the slow conventional phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) for detection of drug resistant tuberculosis (TB). The purpose of this study is to determine the diagnostic accuracy of Genotype MTBDRplus, LPA for TB, and compare its performance with conventional DST. A total of 54 culture samples were analyzed for DST us...

To relieve confusion about the clinical correlates and prognostic implications of the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) in schizophrenia, we conducted a DST in 44 schizophrenic inpatients at drug-free baseline and approximately 4 weeks after neuroleptic treatment. Patients were rated on positive, negative, and depressive symptoms at both times. A head computed tomography (CT) scan was perfor...

Clinically useful predictors of the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy following curative colorectal surgery remain to be determined. In the present study, we investigated the clinical utility of the collagen gel droplet-embedded culture drug sensitivity test (CD-DST) as a predictor of the therapeutic response to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-based adjuvant chemo-therapy in patients with stage II-III co...

It is now well recognized that pre-transplant donor-specific blood transfusion (DST) has a beneficial effect on the survival of allografts. To determine the optimal interval between DST and transplantation, and to analyze the mechanisms of this effect, the survival of cardiac allografts to rats which received a single DST was examined. The cardiac allograft survival was found to be prolonged wh...

Recently, there has been considerable debate on redefining Indian Standard Time (IST). The suggestions include splitting the country into two timezones, while perhaps introducing daylight saving time (DST). We argue that the IST should remain unchanged. The arguments are centred around India’s geography, nation building and practical concerns. The most compelling reason offered in favour of a n...

Abstract: In paper two types of the discrete cosine (and sine) transforms (DCT/DST) are analyzed. These transforms are useful for many applications. It is shown that if an operator, connected with the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), is referred to an appropriate basis it takes block-diagonal form. These blocks coincide with DCT-2/DST-2 for even dimensions of the signals’ space and with DCT6/D...