Does One Size Fit All? Drug Resistance and Standard Treatments: Results of Six Tuberculosis Programmes in Former Soviet Countries.

SETTING: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries in the region faced a dramatic increase in tuberculosis cases and the emergence of drug resistance. OBJECTIVE: To discuss the relevance of the DOTS strategy in settings with a high prevalence of drug resistance. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of one-year treatment outcomes of short-course chemotherapy (SCC) and results of drug susceptibility testing (DST) surveys of six programmes located in the former Soviet Union: Kemerovo prison, Russia; Abkhasia, Georgia; Nagorno-Karabagh, Azerbaijan; Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan; Dashoguz Velayat, Turkmenistan; and South Kazakhstan Oblast, Kazakhstan. Results are reported for new and previously treated smear-positive patients. RESULTS: Treatment outcomes of 3090 patients and DST results of 1383 patients were collected. Treatment success rates ranged between 87% and 61%, in Nagorno-Karabagh and Kemerovo, respectively, and failure rates between 7% and 23%. Any drug resistance ranged between 66% and 31% in the same programmes. MDR rates ranged between 28% in Karakalpakstan and Kemerovo prison and 4% in Nagorno-Karabagh. CONCLUSION: These results show the limits of SCC in settings with a high prevalence of drug resistance. They demonstrate that adapting treatment according to resistance patterns, access to reliable culture, DST and good quality second-line drugs are necessary

HST/NICMOS detection of a partially embedded, intermediate-mass pre-main-sequence population in the 30 Doradus Nebula

We present the detection of an intermediate-mass pre-main-sequence population embedded in the nebular filaments surrounding the 30 Doradus region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using HST/NICMOS. In addition to four previously known luminous Class I infrared ``protostars,'' the NICMOS data reveal 20 new sources with intrinsic infrared excess similar to Galactic pre-main sequence stars. Based on their infrared brightness, these objects can be identified as the LMC equivalent of Galactic pre-main sequence stars. The faintest LMC Young Stellar Objects in the sample have colors similar to T Tauri and have about the same brightness as T Tauri if placed at the distance of the LMC. We find no evidence for a lower-mass cut-off in the initial mass function. Instead, the whole spectrum of stellar masses from pre-main sequence stars with ~1.5Mo to massive O stars still embedded in dense knots appears to be present in the nebular filaments. The majority of the young stellar objects can be found to the north of the central starburst cluster R136. This region is very likely evolving into an OB association.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, uses emulateapj.sty and psfig.sty. accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal (August 2001 issue

Improved sample preparation for GC-MS-SIM analysis of ethyl carbamate in wine.

AbstractAn improved sample preparation procedure for analysis of carcinogenic ethyl carbamate (EC) in wine by GC–MS–SIM is proposed. Differences over AOAC reference procedure were: (1) use of EC-d5 as internal standard instead of less similar propyl carbamate; (2) extraction by diethyl ether instead of more toxic dichloromethane, and (3) concentration by vacuum automated parallel evaporation instead of more time and work consuming rotary evaporation. Mean recovery was 104.4%, intraday precision was 6.7% (3.4μgL−1) and 1.7% (88.5μgL−1), regression coefficient was 0.999 in the linear working range of 3–89μgL−1, and limits of detection and quantification were 0.4 and 1.2μgL−1. Applicability was demonstrated by analysis (in triplicate) of 5 wine samples. EC concentration ranged from 5.2±0.2 to 29.4±1.5μgL−1. The analytical method is selective, accurate, repeatable, linear, and has similar method performance as the reference method along with the several mentioned advantages