Shigella flexneri, Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium, and Listeria monocytogenes were applied to FTA filters, and the filters were used directly as templates to demonstrate their sensitivity and applicability in PCR-based detection assays. With pure cultures, the sensitivities of detection by FTA filter-based PCR were 30 to 50 and 200 CFU for the gram-negative enterics and Listeria, resp...

The burden of disease and associated health-care costs of syphilis are significant despite widespread screening and treatment. Our objective was to conduct an economic evaluation using a simulation model when comparing enzyme immunoassay (EIA) initial testing and Inno-Lia (IL) confirmatory testing (EIA + IL) with rapid plasma reagin (RPR) initial testing and Treponema pallidum particle agglutin...

After a preliminary study of 557 sera used as a procedural training exercise, the Reagin screen test (RST) for the macroscopic detection of reagin (as an aid to detecting syphilis) was qualitatively compared to the rapid plasma Reagin (RPR) (circle) card test and Veneral Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) slide test on 435 random portions of sera using fluorescent treponemal antibody adsorption...

Confirmatory test for syphilis such as fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorption test (FTA-ABS), Treponema pallidum immobilization test (TPI), Treponema pallidum haemagglutination (TPHA) test are technically demanding and not available in most developing country settings outside of reference laboratories. By far, TPHA test has the sensitivity and specificity almost similar to that of FTA-ABS t...

The authors investigated the utility of both a nontreponemal (RPR) test and a treponemal (FTA-ABS) test for the diagnosis of primary syphilis during the emergence of the HIV epidemic in southern Africa. The serological tests were performed on 868 patients with genital ulcerations, seen in five centres. While primary syphilis was diagnosed by multiplex PCR in 163 cases (18.8%), the overall RPR a...

Using the method of Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), in this paper, are analyzed the causes and modes of failure of air conditioners and automotive DC electro-ventilator, as part of automotive air conditioning system. Primarily, there was given a description of FTA method and of the importance of air conditioners and DC electro-ventilators in nowadays automotive industry. Secondly, based on a detaile...

Improvements in the equipment for the automated fluorescent treponemal antibody (AFTA) test for syphilis prompted this comparative study of the AFTA and its manual counterpart, the fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorption (FTA-ABS) test. The AFTA equipment operated satisfactorily, required only minimal monitoring, and afforded a three-to fourfold increase over the number of sera that could be...

Classical Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) can determine the effects of combinations of failure events on a system but cannot capture the potentially critical significance of the temporal ordering of events. In this paper, we propose a temporal extension based on the use of Priority-AND gates to allow relative temporal ordering and temporal analysis in FTA. The classical notion of minimal cut-sets is ...

We describe here a method for DNA elution from buccal cells and whole blood both collected onto Whatman FTA technology, using methanol fixation followed by an elution PCR program. Extracted DNA is comparable in quality to published Whatman FTA protocols, as judged by PCR-based genotyping. Elution of DNA from the dried sample is a known rate-limiting step in the published Whatman FTA protocol; t...