Sexual behaviour of men and women within age-disparate partnerships in South Africa: implications for young women's HIV risk

BACKGROUND: Age-disparate partnerships are hypothesized to increase HIV-risk for young women. However, the evidence base remains mixed. Most studies have focused only on unprotected sex among women in the partnership. Consequently, little is known about other risky behaviours, such as transactional sex, alcohol use, and concurrency, as well as the behaviours of the men who partner with young women. We therefore examined differences in various sexual behaviours of both young women and their male partners by partnership age difference. METHODS: We used nationally representative data from South Africa (2012) on partnerships reported by 16-24 year old black African women (n = 818) and by black African men in partnerships with 16-24 year old women (n = 985). We compared sexual behaviours in age-disparate partnerships and age-similar partnerships, using multiple logistic regression to control for potential confounders and to assess rural/urban differences. RESULTS: Young women in age-disparate partnerships were more likely to report unprotected sex than young women in similar-aged partnerships (aOR:1.51; p = 0.014; 95%CI:1.09-2.11). Men in partnerships with young women were more likely to report unprotected sex (aOR:1.92; p<0.01; 95%CI:1.31-2.81), transactional sex (aOR:2.73; p<0.01; 95%CI:1.64-4.56), drinking alcohol before sex (aOR:1.60; p = 0.062; 95%CI:0.98-2.61), and concurrency (aOR:1.39; p = 0.097; 95%CI:0.94-2.07) when their partners were five or more years younger. The association between age-disparate partnerships and transactional sex (aOR:4.14; p<0.01; 95%CI: 2.03-8.46) and alcohol use (aOR:2.24; p<0.013; 95%CI:1.20-4.19) was only found in urban areas. CONCLUSIONS: Results provide evidence that young women's age-disparate partnerships involve greater sexual risk, particularly through the risky behaviours of their male partners, with the risk amplified for young women in urban areas

Detecting and understanding non-compliance with conservation rules

AbstractThis paper establishes the context for the special issue, “Detecting and Understanding Violations of Conservation Rules”. Illicit or non-compliant human behaviors may occur in all ecosystems and range from subsistence illegal resource collection to poaching by organized criminal syndicates. Such acts have an enormous impact on social–ecological systems, but monitoring non-compliance is challenging, primarily because the topic is sensitive and victims are voiceless. The future of many conservation areas depends upon compliance with conservation rules. However, with a growing human population, consumptive societies, and rapid expansion of business opportunities fueled by new technology, there is little doubt that demand will remain steady or increase for many of our natural resources. We outline major conservation compliance issues and impacts, and review models and methods used to monitor and respond to the problem for both subsistence and commercial non-compliance

An alignment algorithm for bisulfite sequencing using the Applied Biosystems SOLiD System

Summary: Bisulfite sequencing allows cytosine methylation, an important epigenetic marker, to be detected via nucleotide substitutions. Since the Applied Biosystems SOLiD System uses a unique di-base encoding that increases confidence in the detection of nucleotide substitutions, it is a potentially advantageous platform for this application. However, the di-base encoding also makes reads with many nucleotide substitutions difficult to align to a reference sequence with existing tools, preventing the platform's potential utility for bisulfite sequencing from being realized. Here, we present SOCS-B, a reference-based, un-gapped alignment algorithm for the SOLiD System that is tolerant of both bisulfite-induced nucleotide substitutions and a parametric number of sequencing errors, facilitating bisulfite sequencing on this platform. An implementation of the algorithm has been integrated with the previously reported SOCS alignment tool, and was used to align CpG methylation-enriched Arabidopsis thaliana bisulfite sequence data, exhibiting a 2-fold increase in sensitivity compared to existing methods for aligning SOLiD bisulfite data

Rabies in bat-eared foxes in South Africa

Rabies in bat-eared foxes was first recognized in South Africa in 1955 and is likely to have been derived from canine rabies introduced to South Africa in 1950. Since then it has become established in this species in the drier western half of the country and the south-western Cape so that rabies now occurs in bat-eared foxes adjacent to the peri-urban canine population of Cape Town. Peak incidence was recorded in the early 1980s and the incidence is seasonal with most cases occurring in winter.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.mn201

Understanding service demand for mental health among Australians aged 16 to 64 years according to their possible need for treatment

ABSTRACT Background: To inform decisions about mental health resource allocation, planner

Canid and viverrid rabies viruses in South Africa

Historical records suggest that in South Africa rabies was present in viverrids in the early 1800s. In the early 1950s a wave of canine rabies spread from Namibia through Botswana into the northern Transvaal and by 1961 a second front had penetrated south from Mozambique into Swaziland and northern Natal. Today, rabies is regularly confirmed in a number of canid and viverrid species in most regions of South Africa. A panel of anti-nucleoprotein monoclonal antibodies was used to examine 83 virus isolates from these species. Two major reaction patterns, one chiefly confined to viruses from canids and the other to viruses from viverrids, were obtained. In addition, some variation in the reaction patterns of viverrid viruses was observed and spill-over of viverrid virus into canids and vice versa was recorded. Rabies in South Africa appears to behave as two distinct disease entities.Proceedings of a workshop held at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Onderstepoort, South Africa, 3-5 May 1993The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.mn201

HIV risk among adolescent girls and young women in age-disparate partnerships: evidence from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

CAPRISA, 2018.Abstract available in pdf

The suitability of a rolled BHK₂₁monolayer system for the production of vaccines against the SAT types of foot-and-mouth disease virus. I. Adaptation of virus isolates to the system, immunogen yields achieved and assessment of subtype cross reactivity

In an examination of 34 southern African SAT-type foot-and-mouth disease viruses, all but 1 attained satisfactory levels of infectivity within 6 passages in rolled BHK₂₁monolayer cell cultures. However, there were marked differences between adapted viruses with respect to the mass of immunogen (146S material) produced. Several isolates which consistently produced levels ≥2 µg/ml were identified. In cross neutralization tests using post-vaccinal sera, SAT-1 and SAT-2 isolates showed considerable diversity and none of the viruses tested would be expected to produce a broad-spectrum response if incorporated into a vaccine. On the other hand, when 2 of the SAT-2 isolates were incorporated into the same vaccine a distinctly broader response resulted.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.lmchunu2014mn201

Paediatric leukaemia DNA methylation profiling using MBD enrichment and SOLiD sequencing on archival bone marrow smears

BACKGROUND: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children. Over the past four decades, research has advanced the treatment of this cancer from a less than 60% chance of survival to over 85% today. The causal molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we performed sequencing-based genomic DNA methylation profiling of eight paediatric ALL patients using archived bone marrow smear microscope slides. FINDINGS: SOLiD&trade; sequencing data was collected from Methyl-Binding Domain (MBD) enriched fractions of genomic DNA. The primary tumour and remission bone marrow sample was analysed from eight patients. Four patients relapsed and the relapsed tumour was analysed. Input and MBD-enriched DNA from each sample was sequenced, aligned to the hg19 reference genome and analysed for enrichment peaks using MACS (Model-based Analysis for ChIP-Seq) and HOMER (Hypergeometric Optimization of Motif EnRichment). In total, 3.67 gigabases (Gb) were sequenced, 2.74 Gb were aligned to the reference genome (average 74.66% alignment efficiency). This dataset enables the interrogation of differential DNA methylation associated with paediatric ALL. Preliminary results reveal concordant regions of enrichment indicative of a DNA methylation signature. CONCLUSION: Our dataset represents one of the first SOLiD&trade;MBD-Seq studies performed on paediatric ALL and is the first to utilise archival bone marrow smears. Differential DNA methylation between cancer and equivalent disease-free tissue can be identified and correlated with existing and published genomic studies. Given the rarity of paediatric haematopoietic malignancies, relative to adult counterparts, our demonstration of the utility of archived bone marrow smear samples to high-throughput methylation sequencing approaches offers tremendous potential to explore the role of DNA methylation in the aetiology of cancer