INTRODUCTION Failure of sputum smear and/or culture conversion after 2 months of tuberculosis (TB) treatment has been considered a predictor of patient infectivity and treatment failure. We aimed to identify the factors associated with delayed sputum smear and culture conversion in patients with pulmonary TB who were given anti-TB treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS Retrospective cohort of 136 ad...

the effective use of disinfectants constitute an important factor in preventing hospital acquired infections. this study was undertaken to compare the effects of three newly introduced disinfectants in a number of tertiary care hospitals in India, namely superoxidized water (SOW) and two quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), against the effects of 70% ethyl alcohol as one of the most commonly u...

The quantification of bacteria in cell culture infection models is of paramount importance for the characterization of host-pathogen interactions and pathogenicity factors involved. The standard to enumerate bacteria in these assays is plating of a dilution series on solid agar and counting of the resulting colony forming units (CFU). In contrast, the virtual colony count (VCC) method is a high...

The antifungal activity of chloroform extract of leaves of Acanthus ilicifolius was evaluated in Aspergillus fumigatus infected mice. Swiss albino mice (60) were divided into five groups. All the groups were immunosuppressed with cyclophosphamide and cortisone acetate couple of days prior to intranasal inoculation with Aspergillus fumigatus conidia (10(6)) in all the groups, except the first. T...

Objective: To investigate the efficacy and safety of decitabine combined with half the amount of CAG and CAG regimen alone. Methods: Comparison the effectiveness, overall survival and incidence of adverse reactions of 42 cases of MDS used decitabine combined with half the amount of CAG regimen (decitabine 20mg/m, once a day, d1-3, Accra neomycin 7mg/m,intravenous injection, once a day, d4-7, cy...

Recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhG-CSF) was administered at a dose of 1-60 micrograms/kg of body weight to 22 patients with transitional cell carcinoma before chemotherapy as part of a Phase I/II study. In all patients, a specific dose-dependent increase in the absolute neutrophil count (ANC) of 1.8-12 fold was seen. In addition, this augmentation in the ANC was accomp...

BACKGROUND There is a need to validate and suggest easy clinical method for diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in developing countries. OBJECTIVES To validate the use of simplified Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score (CPIS) for the diagnosis of VAP. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING Pediatric intensive care unit of a tertiary care teaching hospital. SUBJECTS 30 children r...

OBJECTIVES Can the characteristics of persisters in cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis also be found in bacilli from the sputum of pulmonary tuberculosis patients? The objective of this study was to explore whether the ability of persisters to grow in liquid but not on solid culture media, as in 100 day static cultures, can also be found in bacilli in sputum. METHODS Serial dilutions of h...

We investigated the effects of recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) and recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhG-CSF) therapy on the natural killer (NK) cell lineage in patients with aplastic anemia and myelodysplastic syndrome. Selected bone marrow (BM) cells were prepared by the elimination of nylon wool-adherent cells and mature T ...

BACKGROUND The role of cytokines in the pathogenesis of pneumonia is still poorly understood. In a previous study the diagnostic value of measuring blood concentrations of interleukin 6 and interferon gamma was established. In the present study the value of blood concentrations of interleukin 8, granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, and lactoferrin as markers of bacteraemic pneumonia is evalua...