Predictors of Virologic Failure in HIV/AIDS Patients Treated with Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy in Brasília, Brazil During 2002–2008

Little data exists concerning the efficacy of the antiretroviral therapy in the Federal District in Brazil, therefore in order to improve HIV/AIDS patients’ therapy and to pinpoint hot spots in the treatment, this research work was conducted. Of 139 HIV/AIDS patients submitted to the highly active antiretroviral therapy, 12.2% failed virologically. The significant associated factors related to unresponsiveness to the lentiviral treatment were: patients’ place of origin (OR = 3.28; IC95% = 1.0–9.73; P = 0.032) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (RR = 2.90; IC95% = 1.19–7.02; P = 0.019). In the logistic regression analysis, the remaining variables in the model were: patients’ birthplace (OR = 3.28; IC95% = 1.10–9.73; P = 0.032) and tuberculosis comorbidity (OR = 3.82; IC95% = 1.19–12.22; P = 0.024). The patients enrolled in this survey had an 88.0% therapeutic success rate for the maximum period of one year of treatment, predicting that T CD4+ low values and elevated viral loads at pretreatment should be particularly considered in tuberculosis coinfection, besides the availability of new antiretroviral drugs displaying optimal activity both in viral suppression and immunological reconstitution

Science and Semantics: A Note on Rough Sets and Vagueness

In the chapter we present rough set theory against the background of recent philosophical discussions about vagueness and empirical sciences. Weiner, in her article about this topic, discusses the supervaluationist semantics of vague predicates and its criticism offered by Fodor and Lepore. She argues that neither the former nor latter approach is consistent with the scientific methodology of dealing with vague concepts such as "obese". In actual fact, it is Frege's philosophical approach that concepts must have sharp boundaries, which is the closest to scientific practice. In this context, rough set theory can be viewed as a modified supervaluationist semantics. To be more precise, rough sets provide a modal version of this semantics, where the super-truth is replaced by a local one. However, there are flies in the ointment: firstly, rough set theory is philosophically weaker than supervaluationism (in consequence, more vulnerable to the criticism of Fodor and Lepore); secondly, Weiner's arguments concerning scientific methods apply to rough sets as well. Yet there is also good news: this philosophical weakness stays actually in full accordance with scientific practice. Thus, rough set theory may be seen as a supervaluationism shifted toward the scientific methodology. In the chapter we shall make a further step into this direction and also present how rough set theory would be like when made fully consistent with the scientific approach to vague predicates. In other words, we also offer a Fregean rough set methodology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013