Does the national program of prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) reach its target in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso?

Background: In the context of universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support, each country has to ensure that 80% of women and children in need have access to PMTCT interventions.Objective: To assess the PMTCT program achievement in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso.Methods: Between August and October 2008, a cross sectional study was carried out in the five health districts of the Centre Health Region. We reviewed weekly statistics from all health care centres (HCC) to compute the coverage of PMTCT program. In 38 HCC with functional PMTCT program, we extracted data of interest from HCC registers and made direct observations of PMTCT services.Results: The PMTCT program was implemented in 49% of HCC (target for the national program: 70%). Fifteen to 31% of these centers were often in shortage for PMTCT consumables. Patients’ privacy was not observed in 67% of Voluntary Counselling & HIV Testing wards. Care providers were not qualified enough to deliver PMTCT services. Vitamin A supplementation was not implemented. None of the facilities offered the whole package of PMTCT program interventions. HCC providing HIV testing in labour or in postnatal ward were consistently lacking. Only 86% of antenatal care new attendants benefited from pre-test counselling; 2.4% of pretested women were HIV-positive and 39% of positive mothers received antiretroviral prophylaxis.Conclusion: Coverage and quality of PMTCT programme in the Centre Health Region in Burkina Faso are still limited. Particular support is needed for training, supervision and infrastructures upgrading.Key words: vertical transmission, HIV infection, program, implementation

Five Grade 7 learners\u27 understanding of comprehension skills at a quintile 5 school in South Africa

Background: Research into language and reading scores show that South African learners struggle to read for meaning. Many local researchers report on the inadequate teaching training programmes. Teachers cannot teach basic comprehenion skills. Objectives: This research identifies a gap in the research and records an intervention programme designed to engage learners and develop their higher-order comprehension abilities. This research analyses responses from five learners who engaged in a variety of literacy activities to extend their zones of literacy abilities to become independent critical thinkers. Method: An interpretivist paradigm, within a qualitative approach, using a case study design was devised and implemented. Five struggling Grade 7 learners were purposively selected to participate in a 10-week intervention programme. Data were collected using pre-tests and post-tests and the learners\u27 own exercise books to assess their academic performance in written comprehensions, their daily comments on their motivation charts, information from two interviews and the researchers\u27 participant observation scheduled notes. Results: During the time of the intervention, all five Grade 7 learners gradually learned and began to use higher-order thinking skills. Conclusion: This small research project indicates that when a teacher explicitly planned and used a variety of literacy strategies to teach comprehension skills, not only did the learners enjoy the respectful discussions but this experience developed them into independent higher-order thinkers

Improving resolution-sensitivity trade off in sub-shot noise quantum imaging

One of the challenges of quantum technologies is realizing the quantum advantage, predicted for ideal systems, in real applications, which have to cope with decoherence and inefficiencies. In quantum metrology, sub-shot-noise quantum imaging (SSNQI) and sensing methods can provide genuine quantum enhancement in realistic situations. However, wide-field SSNQI schemes realized so far suffer a trade-off between the resolution and the sensitivity gain over a classical counterpart: small pixels or integrating area are necessary to achieve high imaging resolution, but larger pixels allow a better detection efficiency of quantum correlations, which means a larger quantum advantage. Here, we show how the SSNQI protocol can be optimized to significantly improve the resolution without giving up the quantum advantage in sensitivity. We show a linear resolution improvement (up to a factor 3) with respect to the simple protocol used in previous demonstrations

Biphoton compression in standard optical fiber: exact numerical calculation

Generation of two-photon wavepackets, produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion in crystals with linearly chirped quasi-phase matching grating, is analyzed. Although being spectrally broad, two-photon wavepackets produced this way are not Fourier transform limited. In the paper we discuss the temporal compression of the wavepackets, exploiting the insertion of a standard optical fiber in the path of one of the two photons. The effect is analyzed by means of full numerical calculation and the exact dispersion dependencies in both the crystal and the fiber are considered. The study opens the way to the practical realization of this idea.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure

Hepatic ERα accounts for sex differences in the ability to cope with an excess of dietary lipids

Objective: Among obesity-associated metabolic diseases, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) represents an increasing public health issue due to its emerging association with atherogenic dyslipidemia and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The lower prevalence of NAFLD in pre-menopausal women compared with men or post-menopausal women led us to hypothesize that the female-inherent ability to counteract this pathology might strongly rely on estrogen signaling. In female mammals, estrogen receptor alpha (ER\u3b1) is highly expressed in the liver, where it acts as a sensor of the nutritional status and adapts the metabolism to the reproductive needs. As in the male liver this receptor is little expressed, we here hypothesize that hepatic ER\u3b1 might account for sex differences in the ability of males and females to cope with an excess of dietary lipids and counteract the accumulation of lipids in the liver. Methods: Through liver metabolomics and transcriptomics we analyzed the relevance of hepatic ER\u3b1 in the metabolic response of males and females to a diet highly enriched in fats (HFD) as a model of diet-induced obesity. Results: The study shows that the hepatic ER\u3b1 strongly contributes to the sex-specific response to an HFD and its action accounts for opposite consequences for hepatic health in males and females. Conclusion: This study identified hepatic ER\u3b1 as a novel target for the design of sex-specific therapies against fatty liver and its cardio-metabolic consequences

Acceptability of interventions to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 in West Africa

Would HIV-1-positive African women use interventions of AIDS testing, medication (oral and vaginal), and vaginal disinfection to reduce the likelihood of HIV-1 transmission to their child ? In this pilot study in two west African cities (Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso), social workers gave a native-language questionnaire to 607 pregnant women at four Maternal and Child Health Centers. The women were asked about their perception of the HIV test ; consequences of testing and counseling ; choice of medical intervention to protect the future child ; and feelings about being in a randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial. Most accepted the principle of an AIDS test, said they wanted the agreement of their regular partner before being tested, and would use interventions to reduce the risk of vertical transmission. The researchers concluded that although concepts of informed consent, randomization, and placebo are difficult to understand, the study results are promising and encourage the evaluation of clinical trials to reduce mother-to-child transmission. (Résumé d'auteur

Anti-proliferative effect of Scoparia dulcis L. against bacterial and fungal strains

Scoparia dulcis L. was sequentially extracted with hexane, chloroform and methanol and soaked with aqueous-acetone (80%) to check for its antimicrobial activities against five bacterial and four fungal strains.250μg of each extract loaded on a whatman paper disc exhibited significant antimicrobial activities on all the fungus and against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Therefore, P. mirabilis is less sensitive to all the extracts while B. cereus, a â-lactamase producer bacterium, was resistant to the activity of the polar methanol and aqueous-acetone extracts. By the microdilution method, the most active extracts were chloroform extract on B. cereus with minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 1.56 mg/ml and Aqueous-acetone extract on S. typhimurium (MIC = 1.56 mg/ml); the antifungal activity was strongest for hexane extract (MIC = 6.25 mg/ml) on both A. niger and P. roquefortii.Keywords: Scoparia dulcis, Antibacterial, Antifungal, Polyphenols

Sex-Specific Microglial Responses to Glucocerebrosidase Inhibition: Relevance to GBA1-Linked Parkinson’s Disease

Microglia are heterogenous cells characterized by distinct populations each contributing to specific biological processes in the nervous system, including neuroprotection. To elucidate the impact of sex-specific microglia heterogenicity to the susceptibility of neuronal stress, we video-recorded with time-lapse microscopy the changes in shape and motility occurring in primary cells derived from mice of both sexes in response to pro-inflammatory or neurotoxic stimulations. With this morpho-functional analysis, we documented distinct microglia subpopulations eliciting sex-specific responses to stimulation: male microglia tended to have a more pro-inflammatory phenotype, while female microglia showed increased sensitivity to conduritol-B-epoxide (CBE), a small molecule inhibitor of glucocerebrosidase, the enzyme encoded by the GBA1 gene, mutations of which are the major risk factor for Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Interestingly, glucocerebrosidase inhibition particularly impaired the ability of female microglia to enhance the Nrf2-dependent detoxification pathway in neurons, attenuating the sex differences observed in this neuroprotective function. This finding is consistent with the clinical impact of GBA1 mutations, in which the 1.5–2-fold reduced risk of developing idiopathic PD observed in female individuals is lost in the GBA1 carrier population, thus suggesting a sex-specific role for microglia in the etiopathogenesis of PD-GBA1