Utility of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) in the Indigenous African Man

Objectives: To examine the great possibility that the indigenous black African man with prostate diseases requires a different diagnostic approach and strategies beyond the standard PSA reference levels generated in non-African study subjects.Design: A hospital based cross-sectional descriptive study.Setting: The Urology Outpatient Clinic and Surgical Ward of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya between 1st April 2012 to 31st March 2013.Subjects: Two hundred and nineteen patients aged 50 years and above with prostate diseases.Main Outcome Measures: The main outcome measure was the PSA levels in patients diagnosed with Acute Prostatitis, Benign Prostate Hyperplasia (BPH) and Prostate Cancer in MTRH. The secondary outcome measures were the correlates associated with elevated PSA.Results: Patients ranged in age from 50 to 96 years with a mean ±  standard deviation of 65.4 ± 10.2 years. Clinical diagnosis of Acute  Prostatitis, BPH and Prostate Cancer was made in 1.8, 63.9 and 34.3% of the study subjects respectively. Sixty-two patients (28.3%) had PSA in the laboratory reference range of 0-4ng/ml considered normal with an average of 1.8 ng/ml. The overall mean was 31.2 ng/ml and those with elevatedPSA levels had a mean of 42.3 ng/ml. There was a positive correlate between prostate enlargement, urine retention, dysuria and family history of prostate disease and elevated PSA (all with p<0.001).Conclusions: The indigenous black African man has high levels of PSA even in benign prostate diseases. This together with histological findings of malignancy in some clinically diagnosed BPH with normal range PSA levels make the use of PSA in this group a bigger challenge. Studies should be conducted to not only elucidate the best use of PSA in the indigenous black African man but also his place in the new biomarkers to supplement or replace PSA in diagnosis and care

Clinical Characteristics of African Men with Prostate Diseases in a Tertiary Centre in Western Kenya

No Abstract

Treatment Seeking Practices for Malaria: A Household Case of Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

Introduction: Malaria is among the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Kenya. Malaria treatment seeking practices in epidemic areas in Africa such as Kenya are not well studied. The study aimed at assessing the treatment seeking practices in residents of Uasin-Gishu County following Malaria infection. Methods: Study was cross sectional study design. Stratified random sampling was used to identify 341 study participants. Principal component analysis was applied to compute the wealth index and the chisquare tests of association were carried out to determine factors associated with choice of treatment. Multivariate logistic regression determined predictors of treatment seeking practices. P<0.05 significance level was used during the study. Results: Fever was reported in 62.8% of all households; 94% sought treatment for the fever. Commonly assessed facility was government health facility (63%), chemists (15%), private clinics (12%) and traditional healers (2%). Educated persons’ were 8.7 fold more likely to seek care from a private hospital. Employed and business owners were 4.1 fold more likely to purchase medicines from chemists. There were significant negative associations between wealth index and education level and seeking care in a government health facility. Respondents in the middle and fourth quintile with tertiary education level rarely sought care from a government health facility respectively. Conclusion: Treatment practices among households were: through government health institutions, private/clinics and chemists. Wealth index, age category of household heads, education level and occupation influenced treatment seeking practice. Reccomendation: There is need for the government for the government to strength community-based interventions and health facilitie

Interplay of material thermodynamics and surface reaction rate on the kinetics of thermochemical hydrogen production

Production of chemical fuels using solar energy has been a field of intense research recently, and two-step thermochemical cycling of reactive oxides has emerged as a promising route. In this process, the oxide of interest is cyclically exposed to an inert gas, which induces (partial) reduction of the oxide at a high temperature, and to an oxidizing gas of either H_2O or CO_2 at the same or lower temperature, which reoxidizes the oxide, releasing H_2 or CO. Thermochemical cycling of porous ceria was performed here under realistic conditions to identify the limiting factor for hydrogen production rates. The material, with 88% porosity and moderate specific surface area, was reduced at 1500 °C under inert gas with 10 ppm residual O_2, then reoxidized with H_2O under flow of 600 sccm g^(−1) of 20% H_2O in Ar to produce H_2. The fuel production process transitions from one controlled by surface reaction kinetics at temperatures below ∼1000 °C to one controlled by the rate at which the reactant gas is supplied at temperatures above ∼1100 °C. The reduction of ceria, when heated from 800 to 1500 °C, is observed to be gas limited at a temperature ramp rate of 50 °C min^(−1) at a flow of 1000 sccm g^(−1) of 10 ppm O_2 in Ar. Consistent with these observations, application of Rh catalyst particles improves the oxidation rate at low temperatures, but provides no benefit at high temperatures for either oxidation or reduction. The implications of these results for solar thermochemical reactors are discussed

Evolution of magnetic properties in the normal spinel solid solution Mg(1-x)Cu(x)Cr2O4

We examine the evolution of magnetic properties in the normal spinel oxides Mg(1-x)Cu(x)Cr2O4 using magnetization and heat capacity measurements. The end-member compounds of the solid solution series have been studied in some detail because of their very interesting magnetic behavior. MgCr2O4 is a highly frustrated system that undergoes a first order structural transition at its antiferromagnetic ordering temperature. CuCr2O4 is tetragonal at room temperature as a result of Jahn-Teller active tetrahedral Cu^2+ and undergoes a magnetic transition at 135 K. Substitution of magnetic cations for diamagnetic Mg^2+ on the tetrahedral A site in the compositional series Mg(1-x)Cu(x)Cr2O4 dramatically affects magnetic behavior. In the composition range 0 < x < 0.3, the compounds are antiferromagnetic. A sharp peak observed at 12.5K in the heat capacity of MgCr2O4 corresponding to a magnetically driven first order structural transition is suppressed even for small x suggesting glassy disorder. Uncompensated magnetism - with open magnetization loops - develops for samples in the x range 0.43 < x < 1. Multiple magnetic ordering temperatures and large coercive fields emerge in the intermediate composition range 0.43 < x < 0.47. The Neel temperature increases with increasing x across the series while the value of the Curie-Weiss Theta decreases. A magnetic temperature-composition phase diagram of the solid solution series is presented

Effect of long term exclusion of cattle on soil properties in the upper Burdekin catchment

There is growing evidence of long term degradation of soil resources as a result of grazing pressures in many parts of the upper Burdekin catchment, north Queensland. To assess pathways to recovery of grazed land, sites were selected where small parts of a paddock had been fenced off to completely exclude cattle for the last 15 years. Generally, exclusion improved cover and soil surface condition but had little effect on nutrient stocks. However, in grazed areas, some nutrients were in greater concentrations close to the surface and therefore more vulnerable to loss through run-off from rainfall events

Magnetic structure and properties of the Li-ion battery materials FeSO 4F and LiFeSO 4F

Using magnetic susceptibility and low-temperature neutron diffraction experiments we present a thorough characterization of the magnetic properties of LiFeSO 4F and FeSO 4F. Temperature dependent magnetic susceptibility measurements show a transition to long-range antiferromagnetic order at 100 K in FeSO 4F whereas the ordering temperature in LiFeSO 4F is 25 K. We attribute the decreased ordering temperature to a structural change which decreases the strength of the magnetic interactions along the length of the chains and to the difference of supersuper-exchange interactions between Fe 2+ and Fe 3+ ions. Powder neutron diffraction experiments were used to determine the magnetic structures of both compounds, which are discussed in terms of exchange interactions and the anisotropy of Fe 2+. The iron magnetic moments are antiparallel within the chains, whereas the coupling between the chains is different in the lithiated compound compared to the delithiated one, resulting in different spin arrangements. © 2011 American Chemical Society

Fast photoconductor CdTe detectors for synchrotron x-ray studies

The Advanced Photon Source will be that brightest source of synchrotron x-rays when it becomes operational in 1996. During normal operation, the ring will be filled with 20 bunches of positrons with an interbunch spacing of 177 ns and a bunch width of 119 ps. To perform experiments with x-rays generated by positrons on these time scales one needs extremely high speed detectors. To achieve the necessary high speed, we are developing MBE-grown CdTe-base photoconductive position sensitive array detectors. The arrays fabricated have 64 pixels with a gap of 100 {mu}m between pixels. The high speed response of the devices was tested using a short pulse laser. X-ray static measurements were performed using an x-ray tube and synchrotron radiation to study the device`s response to flux and wavelength changes. This paper presents the response of the devices to some of these tests and discusses different physics aspects to be considered when designing high speed detectors