Age- and region-specific hepatitis B prevalence in Turkey estimated using generalized linear mixed models: a systematic review

Toy M, Önder FO, Wörmann T, et al. Age- and region-specific hepatitis B prevalence in Turkey estimated using generalized linear mixed models: a systematic review. BMC infectious diseases. 2011;11(1): 337.BACKGROUND: To provide a clear picture of the current hepatitis B situation, the authors performed a systematic review to estimate the age- and region-specific prevalence of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in Turkey. METHODS: A total of 339 studies with original data on the prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in Turkey and published between 1999 and 2009 were identified through a search of electronic databases, by reviewing citations, and by writing to authors. After a critical assessment, the authors included 129 studies, divided into categories: 'age-specific'; 'region-specific'; and 'specific population group'. To account for the differences among the studies, a generalized linear mixed model was used to estimate the overall prevalence across all age groups and regions. For specific population groups, the authors calculated the weighted mean prevalence. RESULTS: The estimated overall population prevalence was 4.57, 95% confidence interval (CI): 3.58, 5.76, and the estimated total number of CHB cases was about 3.3 million. The outcomes of the age-specific groups varied from 2.84, (95% CI: 2.60, 3.10) for the 0-14-year olds to 6.36 (95% CI: 5.83, 6.90) in the 25-34-year-old group. CONCLUSION: There are large age-group and regional differences in CHB prevalence in Turkey, where CHB remains a serious health problem

The Diagnostic Value of Polimerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in Genital Chlamydial Infections

This study was performed to compare the PCR 16S rRNA with direct and indirect EIA (immünosorbent assay) methods in the diagnosis of endocervical Chlamydial infection. From 186 women attending to the out patients gynecology clinic for endocervical disease, a total of 372 endocervical samples and 186 sera samples were collected. C. trachomatis were found in 32 (17.2%) of endocervical samples by PCR and in 28 (15%) of samples by EIA. Thirty-three (17.7%) of the samples were positive by at least one used method. Serum antibody responses were confirmed in 48 (25.8%) of all sera samples by indirect EIA. These data suggests that PCR is more sensitive (96.9%) than EIA for (84.8%) detection C. trachomatis in endocervical specimens

Effects of indium and nitrogen mole concentrations on the optical properties in a GaInNas/GaAs quantum well under the intense laser field

The effect of indium and nitrogen mole concentrations on the nonlinear optical properties in a Ga1-xInxNyAs1-y/GaAs single quantum well under the intense laser field is theoretically studied within the effective mass approximation and the envelope function approach. The analytical expressions of optical properties are obtained by using the compact density-matrix approach. The numerical results show that the linear, third-order nonlinear and total absorption and refractive index changes depend both on the intense laser field and on the indium and nitrogen concentrations. From the findings of this study, it has been concluded that the linear and nonlinear optical properties in a Ga1-xInxNyAs1-y/GaAs single quantum well under the intense laser field can be tuned by changing the indium and nitrogen mole fraction. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

An efficient multiresolution framework for high quality interactive rendering of massive point clouds using multi-way kd-trees

We present an efficient technique for out-of-core multi-resolution construction and high quality interactive visualization of massive point clouds. Our approach introduces a novel hierarchical level of detail (LOD) organization based on multi-way kd-trees, which simplifies memory management and allows control over the LOD-tree height. The LOD tree, constructed bottom up using a fast high-quality point simplification method, is fully balanced and contains all uniformly sized nodes. To this end, we introduce and analyze three efficient point simplification approaches that yield a desired number of high-quality output points. For constant rendering performance, we propose an efficient rendering-on-a-budget method with asynchronous data loading, which delivers fully continuous high quality rendering through LOD geo-morphing and deferred blending. Our algorithm is incorporated in a full end-to-end rendering system, which supports both local rendering and cluster-parallel distributed rendering. The method is evaluated on complex models made of hundreds of millions of point samples

Low recurrence rate of hepatocellular carcinoma following ledipasvir and sofosbuvir treatment in a real-world chronic hepatitis C patients cohort

WOS: 000469027000006PubMed ID: 30740820The aims of the present study were to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir (LDV/SOF) with or without ribavirin in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) in patients with advanced liver disease and to analyse whether the use of LDV/SOF treatment is associated with a new occurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) during and after LDV/SOF treatment. The Turkish Early Access Program provided LDV/SOF treatment to a total of 200 eligible CHC patients with advanced liver disease. The median follow-up period was 22months. All patients were Caucasian, 84% were infected with genotype 1b, and 24% had a liver transplantation before treatment. The sustained virological response (SVR12) was 86.0% with ITT analysis. SVR12 was similar among patients with Child-Pugh classes A, B and C disease and transplant recipients. From baseline to SVR12, serum ALT level and MELD score were significantly improved (P<0.001). LDV/SOF treatment was generally well tolerated. Only one patient developed a new diagnosed HCC. Seventeen of the 35 patients, who had a history of previous HCC, developed HCC recurrence during the LDV/SOF treatment or by a median follow-up of 6months after treatment. HCC recurrence was less commonly observed in patients who received curative treatment for HCC compared with those patients who received noncurative treatment (P=0.007). In conclusion, LDV/SOF with or without ribavirin is an effective and tolerable treatment in CHC patients with advanced liver disease. Eradication is associated with improvements in liver function and a reduced risk of developing a new occurrence of HCC. Ledipasvir and sofosbuvir with or without ribavirin is an effective and tolerable treatment in hepatitis C virus-infected patients with advanced liver disease. Eradication is associated with improvements in liver function and reduces the risk of developing a new occurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma