In order to improve the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, there is an urgent need to enhance the efficacy of existing agents and also to develop more efficient drug delivery systems. Here, we synthesized a novel anti-TB drug complex consisting of zinc and rifampicin (Zn-RIF), and encapsulated it into transferrin-conjugated silver quantum-dots (Zn-RIF-Tf-QD) to improve delivery in macrophages. Succe...

We present a smoothed analysis of Gaussian elimination, both with partial pivoting and without pivoting. Let A be any matrix and let A be a slight random perturbation of A. We prove that it is unlikely that A has large condition number. Using this result, we prove it is unlikely that A has large growth factor under Gaussian elimination without pivoting. By combining these results, we bound the ...

INTRODUCTION Rifampicin (RIF) and clarithromycin (CLR) are common drugs for the treatment of infections like Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium ulcerans. Treatment for these diseases are long-term and the individual pharmacokinetic variation, drug-drug interactions or non-adherence may introduce sub-therapeutic exposure or toxicity. The application of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM)...

A new automated real-time PCR assay for the detection of rifampicin (RIF) and isoniazid (INH) resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) was evaluated. A total of 163 clinical samples (128 pulmonary and 35 extra-pulmonary) were processed using four PCR assay kits: Abbott RealTime MTB RIF/INH, Genotype MTBDRplus, Xpert/MTB RIF, and Anyplex MTB/MDR. The results of phenotypic drug-susceptibili...

To investigate the antagonism between isoniazid (INH) and rifampin (rifampicin) (RIF)-pyrazinamide (PZA) combination observed in Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected mice, extensive pharmacokinetic studies of INH were performed and followed by experiments to assess the impact of increasing doses of INH on the antimicrobial activity of RIF-PZA combination. INH at 6.25 mg/kg of body weight produce...

of tuberculosis disappeared with no evidence of recurrence at 1-year follow-up. Drug interactions between Rif and protease inhibitors have prompted clinical studies of HIV-infected patients that have documented the efficacy of Rib as a substitute for Rif in the 6-month antituberculous regimen [2–4]. Intolerance to Rif is not rare and could be another indication for Rib. The tolerance profile of...

Because of scaling problems, Gaussian elimination with pivoting is not always as accurate as one might reasonably expect. It is shown that even a single iteration of iterative refinement in single precision is enough to make Gaussian elimination stable in a very strong sense. Also, it is shown that without iterative refinement row pivoting is inferior to column pivoting in situations where the ...

Angiotensin (Ang) receptor blockers (ARBs) increase bradykinin (BK) by antagonizing Ang II at its type 1 (AT(1)) receptors and diverting Ang II to its counterregulatory type 2 (AT(2)) receptors. Because the effect of ARBs on BK is constrained by the short half-life of BK and because ACE inhibitors block the degradation of BK, this study was designed to test the hypothesis that an ACE inhibitor ...

BACKGROUND This study evaluated the characteristics and results of patients who suffer from recurrent implantation failure (RIF). MATERIALS AND METHODS In this cross sectional study, a total of 2183 cases who were evaluated retrospectively at the Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty, Department of Obstetrics and Gyneacology, IVF unit between 2000-2007. According to the data gathered...

Rapid and accurate detection of multidrug resistance (MDR) in Mycobacterium tuberculosis is essential to improve treatment outcomes and reduce global transmission but remains a challenge. Rifampin (RIF) resistance is a reliable marker of MDR tuberculosis (TB) since by far the majority of RIF-resistant strains are also isoniazid (INH) resistant. We have developed a rapid, sensitive, and specific...