Cryptococcus bacillisporus (VGIII) Meningoencephalitis Acquired in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

We describe a case of chronic meningoencephalitis with hydrocephalus caused by Crypto- coccus bacillisporus (VGIII) in an immunocompetent patient from Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This first report of a member of the Cryptococcus gattii species complex from Bolivia suggests that C. bacillisporus (VGIII) is present in this tropical region of the country and complements our epidemiological and clinical knowledge of this group of emerging fungal pathogens in South America.Peer Reviewe

Pulmonary cystic disease in HIV positive individuals in the Democratic Republic of Congo: three case reports

Pulmonary emphysema and bronchiectasis in HIV seropositive patients has been described in the presence of injection drug use, malnutrition, repeated opportunistic infections, such as Pneumocytis jirovici pneumonia and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, and has been linked to the presence of HIV virus in lung tissue. Given the high burden of pulmonary infections and malnutrition among people living with HIV in resource poor settings, these individuals may be at increased risk of developing pulmonary emphysema, potentially reducing the long term benefit of antiretroviral therapy (ART) if initiated late in the course of HIV infection

Computed CD4 percentage as a low-cost method for determining pediatric antiretroviral treatment eligibility

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The performance of the WHO recommendations for pediatric antiretroviral treatment (ART) in resource poor settings is insufficiently documented in routine care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We compared clinical and immunological criteria in 366 children aged 0 to 12 years in Kinshasa and evaluated a simple computation to estimate CD4 percent, based on CD4 count, total white blood cell count and percentage lymphocytes. Kappa (κ) statistic was used to evaluate eligibility criteria and linear regression to determine trends of CD4 percent, count and total lymphocyte count (TLC).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Agreement between clinical and immunological eligibility criteria was poor (κ = 0.26). One third of children clinically eligible for ART were ineligible using immunological criteria; one third of children immunologically eligible were ineligible using clinical criteria. Among children presenting in WHO stage I or II, 54 (32%) were eligible according to immunological criteria. Agreement with CD4 percent was poor for TLC (κ = 0.04), fair for total CD4 count (κ = 0.39) and substantial for CD4 percent computational estimate (κ = 0.71). Among 5 to 12 years old children, total CD4 count was higher in younger age groups (-32 cells/mm³per year older), CD4 percent was similar across age groups.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Age-specific thresholds for CD4 percent optimally determine pediatric ART eligibility. The use of CD4 percent computational estimate may increase ART access in settings with limited access to CD4 percent assays.</p

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Detection of satiric news on social media: analysis of the phenomenon with a French dataset

The topic of deceptive and satiric news has drawn attention from both the public and the academic community, as such misinformation has the potential to have extremely adverse effects on individuals and society. Detecting false and satiric news automatically is a challenging problem in deception detection, and it has tremendous real-word political and social influences. In this paper, we contribute a useful French satiric dataset to the research community and provide a satiric news detection system using machine learning to automate classifications significantly. In addition, we present the preliminary results of our research designed to discriminate real news from satiric stories, and thus ultimately reduce false and satiric news distribution

A collaborative intelligence approach to fighting COVID-19 false news ::a Chinese case

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 has heightened interest in news about the pandemic. In addition to obtaining real-time developments about COVID-19, people have learned about prevention methods through the news media. Ironically, false COVID-19 news has spread faster than the virus, posing an additional health threat with advice being as dangerous as infection. In this study, we developed a Chinese news article dataset on COVID-19 misinformation, which contained 1266 verified articles from 118 Chinese digital newspaper platforms from January 2020 to January 2021. This dataset uses machine learning methods to detect false news in the Chinese language. Because automated classification methods, combined with human computation-based approaches, are effective for combating digital misinformation, we applied and evaluated a collaborative intelligence approach that leverages human fact-checking skills with feedback on news stories using four criteria: source, author, message, and spelling. The results show that reliable human feedback can help detect false news with high accuracy

How to motivate participation and improve quality of crowdsourcing when building accessibility maps

Crowdsourcing, as one of the most promising tech-niques for distributed problem-solving, requires sustained human involvement. Therefore, it also brings new challenges to data management, fundamentally data input and its quality. In this paper, we looked at various forms of user motivations and quality control of crowdsourcing when building accessibility maps mobile applications. We discuss how motivations could be used to contribute to our accessibility maps scenarios, and how data can be improved for two types of participants: individual participants and organization participants. We identified three useful techniques for improving data quality: qualification-based, reputation-based, and aggregation-based. In addition, based on our own mobile application (named WEMAP), we evaluated our approaches through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews

CD4 percent obtained by flow cytometryandcomputational estimate are stable with increasing age (p 0

05). Linear prediction (and 95%CI) of CD4 percent obtained by flow cytometry (solid line), CD4 percent computational estimate (dashed line), total CD4 count (long dash line) and TLC (long dash – dotted line) in children aged 5 to 12 years.<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Computed CD4 percentage as a low-cost method for determining pediatric antiretroviral treatment eligibility"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/8/31</p><p>BMC Infectious Diseases 2008;8():31-31.</p><p>Published online 6 Mar 2008</p><p>PMCID:PMC2292192.</p><p></p

Grey areas indicate children misclassified using CD4 percent computational estimate compared to CD4 percent obtained by flow cytometry

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Computed CD4 percentage as a low-cost method for determining pediatric antiretroviral treatment eligibility"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/8/31</p><p>BMC Infectious Diseases 2008;8():31-31.</p><p>Published online 6 Mar 2008</p><p>PMCID:PMC2292192.</p><p></p

Case 1: Surinfected dystrophic bullous emphysema with pleurisy on the right side

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Pulmonary cystic disease in HIV positive individuals in the Democratic Republic of Congo: three case reports"</p><p>http://www.jmedicalcasereports.com/content/1/1/101</p><p>Journal of Medical Case Reports 2007;1():101-101.</p><p>Published online 22 Sep 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2082036.</p><p></p