Incidence and spontaneous clearance of gonorrhea and chlamydia infections among men who have sex with men: a prospective cohort study in Zhuhai, China

BackgroundMen who have sex with men (MSM) face significant risks of Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and/or Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) infection. Nevertheless, only limited studies have looked into the site-specific infection and clearance of CT/NG. In order to prevent transmission, it is essential to understand the underlying factors that drive infection and spontaneous clearance.MethodsA 12-week cohort study examined the association between CT/NG infection, self-clearance, and sexual behaviors among MSM. The Willingness Service recruited participants who completed weekly questionnaires and provided urine, throat, and rectal swab samples.ResultsThe study involved 151 men, in which 51 (33.8%) were diagnosed with CT/NG infection during the study period. HIV (OR = 11.31), kissing (OR = 1.59), receptive oral sex (OR = 36.64), and insertive anal sex (OR = 19.73) constituted significant risk factors. 100% condom use (OR = 5.78) and antibiotic (OR = 7.53) were more likely to cause spontaneous clearance.DiscussionMSM may engage in riskier sexual behaviors due to insufficient knowledge and awareness of STI prevention, leading to increased susceptibility to NG/CT. It is crucial to concentrate on enhancing health education for MSM.ConclusionThis study found that the rectum was the most prevalent site of CT/NG and sexual behavior can influence the infection. Additionally, the appropriate use of antibiotics and consistent condom use may contribute to clear spontaneously

Comparison between HIV self-testing and facility-based HIV testing approach on HIV early detection among men who have sex with men: A cross-sectional study

Background To assess whether HIV self-testing (HIVST) has a better performance in identifying HIV-infected cases than the facility-based HIV testing (HIVFBT) approach. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among men who have sex with men (MSM) by using an online questionnaire (including information on sociodemographic, sexual biography, and HIV testing history) and blood samples (for limiting antigen avidity enzyme immunoassay, gene subtype testing, and taking confirmed HIV test). MSM who were firstly identified as HIV positive through HIVST and HIVFBT were compared. Chi-square or Fisher’s exact test was used to explore any association between both groups and their subgroups. Results In total, 124 MSM HIV cases were identified from 2017 to 2021 in Zhuhai, China, including 60 identified through HIVST and 64 through HIVFBT. Participants in the HIVST group were younger (≤30 years, 76.7% vs. 46.9%), were better educated (>high school, 61.7% vs. 39.1%), and had higher viral load (≥1,000 copies/ml, 71.7% vs. 50.0%) than MSM cases identified through HIVFBT. The proportion of early HIV infection in the HIVST group was higher than in the HIVFBT group, identified using four recent infection testing algorithms (RITAs) (RITA 1, 46.7% vs. 25.0%; RITA 2, 43.3% vs. 20.3%; RITA 3, 30.0% vs. 14.1%; RITA 4, 26.7% vs. 10.9%; all p < 0.05). Conclusions The study showed that HIVST has better HIV early detection among MSM and that recent HIV infection cases mainly occur in younger and better-educated MSM. Compared with HIVFBT, HIVST is more accessible to the most at-risk population on time and tends to identify the case early. Further implementation studies are needed to fill the knowledge gap on this medical service model among MSM and other target populations

Composition engineering in doctor‐blading of perovskite solar cells

Organic-inorganic halide perovskite (OIHP) solar cells with efficiency over 18% power conversion efficiency (PCE) have been widely achieved with lab scale spin-coating method which is however not scalable for the fabrication of large area solar panels. The PCEs of OIHP solar cells made by scalable deposition methods, such as doctor-blading or slot-die coating, have been lagging far behind than spin-coated devices. In this study the authors report composition engineering in doctor-bladed OIHP solar cells with p-i-n planar hetero-junction structure to enhance their efficiency. Phase purer OIHP thin films are obtained by incorporating a small amount of cesium (Cs+) and bromine (Br-) ions into perovskite precursor solution, which also reduces the required film formation temperature. Pinhole free OIHP thin films with micrometer-sized grains have been obtained assisted by a secondary grain growth with added methylammonium chloride into the precursor solution. The OIHP solar cells using these bladed thin films achieved PCEs over 19.0%, with the best stabilized PCE reaching 19.3%. This represents a significant step toward scalable manufacture of OIHP solar cells

A Novel Atom Pair Attention Methodology for Molecular Representation Learning

Rapid and accurate prediction of molecular properties is a fundamental task in drug discovery. In recent years, deep learning-based molecular property pre diction methods have received much attention and recent successes have shown that learning the representations of molecular structures by applying graph neural net works (GNNs) can achieve better prediction results. However, most previous ap proaches typically focus on learning atomic embedding, while in this paper, we pro pose a novel attention method based on atom pair embedding, and it was applied to two types of prediction task. Firstly, learning of atom pair embedding was done on 2D molecular graphs for predicting a series of ligand properties and secondly, the atom pair embedding was learned on ligand/protein 3D complex structures together with axial attention network to predict protein-ligand interaction. In MolecularNet bench mark datasets, our method achieved better performance than previous state-of-the-art models in ten property prediction tasks and in the task for protein-ligand interaction prediction, our method also obtained superior results on the PDB2016 dataset than a collection of reference models. Our source code will be publicly available upon the acceptance of the manuscript