A retrospective cohort study of body mass index and survival in HIV infected patients with and without TB co-infection.

CAPRISA, 2018.Abstract available in pdf

Myocardial strain in healthy adults across a broad age range as revealed by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging at 1.5 and 3.0T: associations of myocardial strain with myocardial region, age, and sex

Purpose: We assessed myocardial strain using cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) using 1.5T and 3.0T MRI in healthy adults. Materials and Methods: Healthy adults without any history of cardiovascular disease underwent MRI at 1.5T and 3.0T within 2 days. The MRI protocol included b-SSFP, 2D cine-EPI-DENSE, and late gadolinium enhancement in subjects>45 years. Acquisitions were divided into 6 segments, global and segmental peak longitudinal and circumferential strain were derived and analyzed by field strength, age and gender. Results: 89 volunteers (mean age 44.8 ± 18.0 years, range: 18-87 years) underwent MRI at 1.5T, and 88 of these subjects underwent MRI at 3.0T (1.4±1.4 days between the scans). Compared with 3.0T, the magnitudes of global circumferential (-19.5±2.6% vs. -18.47±2.6%; p=0.001) and longitudinal (-12.47±3.2% vs -10.53±3.1%; p=0.004) strain were greater at 1.5T. At 1.5T, longitudinal strain was greater in females than in males: -10.17±3.4% vs. -13.67±2.4%; p=0.001. Similar observations occurred for circumferential strain at 1.5T (-18.72±2.2% vs. -20.10±2.7%; p=0.014) and at 3.0T (-17.92 ± 1.8% vs -19.1 ± 3.1%; p=0.047). At 1.5T, longitudinal and circumferential strain were not associated with age after accounting for sex (longitudinal strain p= 0.178, circumferential strain p= 0.733). At 3.0T, longitudinal and circumferential strain were associated with age. (p<0.05) Longitudinal strain values were greater in the apico-septal, basal-lateral and mid-lateral segments and circumferential strain in the inferior, infero-lateral and antero-lateral LV segments. Conclusion: Myocardial strain parameters as revealed by cine-DENSE at different MRI field strengths were associated with myocardial region, age and sex

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

Abstracts from the NIHR INVOLVE Conference 2017

n/

A retrospective cohort study of body mass index and survival in HIV infected patients with and without TB co-infection

Abstract Background High early morbidity and mortality following antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation has been a distinguishing feature of ART programmes in resource limited settings (RLS) compared to high-income countries. This study assessed how well body mass index (BMI: kg/m2) correlated with survival among HIV infected patients with and without TB co-infection. Methods We retrospectively evaluated clinical data from 1000 HIV infected patients, among whom 389 were also co-infected with TB, between January 2008 and December 2010, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Results Among 948 patients eligible for analysis, 15.7% (149/948) were underweight (< 18.50), 55.9% (530/948) had normal BMI (≥18.50–24.90), 18.7% (177/948) were overweight (25.00–29.00) and 9.7% (92/948) were obese (≥30.00). Irrespective of TB status, underweight patients, had significantly higher risk of death compared to those with normal BMI at baseline (aHR = 2.9; 95% CI: 1.5–5.7; P = 0.002). Conclusions Irrespective of TB co-infection, low BMI correlated with mortality in HIV infected patients. Trial registration UKZN Biomedical Research Ethics Committee Reference number E 248/05, 23 September 2005

Additional file 1: of A retrospective cohort study of body mass index and survival in HIV infected patients with and without TB co-infection

Multilingual abstracts in the five official working languages of the United Nations. (PDF 443 kb

Vertebrate herbivore-induced changes in plants and soils: linkages to ecosystem functioning in a semi-arid steppe

Large grazing herbivores have been reported to determine the structure and function of grassland ecosystems. However, the ecological linkages between structure and functioning components have yet been thoroughly explored. Here, we test the hypothesis of the impact of grazing on soil nematode community (e.g. structure and composition) and linkages to ecosystem functioning (e.g. soil N mineralization and ANPP) via changes in pathways of plant community, soil nutrients and soil environment using a field experiment maintained for 5years with seven levels of grazing intensity in the Inner Mongolian grassland. A structural equation model (SEM) with nematode abundances as response variables showed that plant-feeding and fungal-feeding nematodes were driven by changes in the plant community, and bacterial-feeding nematodes were affected by soil abiotic nutrients and environment, while omnivorous+carnivorous nematodes were altered by soil environment and bacterial-feeding nematodes. This indicates that the top-down control by grazing leads to bottom-up control in the soil food web. We found that grazing affected the ecosystem functioning via different pathways. Grazing effects soil N mineralization by changing plant community, soil nutrients, soil environment and nematodes community structure, while it affects ANPP by altering soil N mineralization and soil environment. Our findings could provide a better understanding of the responses of plants and soils to grazing and the linkages between structure and functioning of above-ground and below-ground in the semi-arid steppe