Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of acute hepatitis in many developing countries. This study describes an outbreak of HEV infection in Al-Sadr city, Baghdad. Blood samples obtained from patients with jaundice attending 19 primary health care centres in AI-Sadr city during a 6-month period in 2005 were tested for HEV. HEV (IgM) antibodies were detected in 38.1% of 268 patients. The assoc...

In a Perspective, Wafaa El-Sadr and colleagues discuss tailored approaches to treatment and prevention of HIV infection.

Conferences in computational biology continue to provide tutorials on classical and new methods in the field. This can be taken as an indicator that education is still a bottleneck in our field's process of becoming an established scientific discipline. Bielefeld University has been one of the early providers of bioinformatics education, both locally and via the internet. The Bielefeld Bioinfor...

Akbar, however, was himself considered to be a healer to be healer by his miraculous powers. The court physician was one of the top-most officers of the court. Hakim Humam was such a physician who was one of the nine jewels (nauratnas) of Akbar. In 1581, Akbar curtailed the powers of Sadr (or Sadr-i-Jahan, the chief Justice and Administrator of the Empire) and he divided the empire in six zones...

he people of Swaziland—a small, landlocked nation in southern Africa—have among the worst life expectancy measures in the world, a result of the twin epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis. While much has been done to confront HIV among pregnant Swazi women, fully 41 percent have the retrovirus. And while high-quality HIV health services and evidence-based treatments are widely accessible at primary...

A novel fractionation method, based on both particle size and settling characteristics, was employed to examine metal distributions among five fractions. In-stream and stormwater runoff samples were collected from four land use types: highway, urban, agricultural (storm event and irrigation), and natural. Highway samples contained the highest dissolved concentrations for most metals, and freshw...