BACKGROUND In using regularly collected or existing surveillance data to characterize engagement in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) services among marginalized populations, differences in sampling methods may produce different pictures of the target population and may therefore result in different priorities for response. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to use existing data to ev...

The objective of this study was to determine which factors are predictive of institutionalization in Huntington's disease. Seven hundred and ninety-nine subjects with 4313 examinations from the Baltimore Huntington's Disease Center were included in the data set; 88 of these patients with an average follow-up time of 9.2 years went from living at home to being institutionalized while being obser...

This analysis describes the relationship between age and transitions from four living arrangements: living alone, living with spouse only, living with a child, and living with a spouse and child. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households, collected in 1987-88 and 1992-93, are used to calculate destination-specific hazard rates by age and then construct multiple-decrement life tab...

OBJECTIVES Social inactivity predicts adverse health events, but less is known about how different dimensions of social activity are related to health. The aim of this study was to investigate collective (e.g., cultural and organizational activities) and productive (e.g., helping others) social activity as predictors of risk for mortality and institutionalization in old age. METHOD A total of...

There is increasing interest in the stabilization of heavy metals in road-derived sediments (RDS), to enable environmentally responsible reuse applications and circumvent the need for costly landfill disposal. To reduce the mobility of heavy metals (i.e. Cu, Pb and Zn) the effectiveness of amendments using phosphate, compost and fly ash addition were investigated using batch leaching experiment...

BACKGROUND South Africa continues to witness an increase in illicit poly-substance use, although a precise measurement continues to be compounded by difficulties in accessing users. In a pilot attempt to use respondent-driven sampling (RDS)-a chain referral sampling method used to access populations of individuals who are 'hard-to-reach'-this article documents the feasibility of the method as r...

OBJECTIVES To compare two methods for sampling female sex workers (FSWs) for bio-behavioural surveillance. We compared the populations of sex workers recruited by the venue-based Priorities for Local AIDS Control Efforts (PLACE) method and a concurrently implemented network-based sampling method, respondent-driven sampling (RDS), in Liuzhou, China. METHODS For the PLACE protocol, all female w...

Surfactant protein B (SP-B) deficiency has become increasingly recognized as a cause of severe prolonged respiratory distress. However, little has been reported with regard to the genetic variability of SP-B in Chinese infants with neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). One case of a Chinese male infant with neonatal RDS was analyzed for clinical manifestation and genetic variability of ...