Antiretroviral treatment outcomes in patients who received rifampicin together with nevirapine or efavirenz.

Cape Town TB Conferenc

Promoting adherence to antiretroviral therapy: the experience from a primary care setting in Khayelitsha, South Africa.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the approach used to promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and to present the outcomes in the first primary care public sector ART project in South Africa. DESIGN: The study is a prospective open cohort, including all adult patients naive to previous ART who received antiretroviral treatment in Khayelitsha, from May 2001 to the end of 2002. Patients were followed until their most recent visit before 31 July 2003. METHODS: Plasma viral load was determined at 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months after ART was initiated, and CD4 cell counts 6-monthly. Kaplan-Meier estimates were determined for the cumulative proportions of patients surviving, and patients with viral load suppression and viral rebound. RESULTS: A total of 287 patients were initiated on triple therapy. The probability of survival was 86.3% at 24 months. The median CD4 cell count gain was 288 cells/microliters at 24 months. Viral load was less than 400 copies/ml in 89.2, 84.2 and 69.7% of patients at 6, 12 and 24 months, respectively. The cumulative probability of viral rebound (two consecutive HIV-RNA measurements above 400 copies/ml) after achieving an HIV-RNA measurement below 400 copies/ml was 13.2% at 18 months. CONCLUSION: The study shows that, with a standard approach to patient preparation and strategies to enhance adherence, a cohort of patients on ART can be retained in a resource-limited setting in a developing country. A high proportion of patients achieved suppression of viral replication. The subsequent probability of viral rebound was low

Nevirapine-Induced Heratotoxicity: Incidence, Risk Factors and Associated Mortality in a Primary Care ART Programme in South Africa

CROI 200

Morphological instabilities of a thin film on a Penrose lattice: a Monte Carlo study

We computed by a Monte Carlo method the thermal relaxation of a polycrystalline thin film deposited on a Penrose lattice. The thin film was modelled by a 2 dimensional array of elementary domains, which have each a given height. During the Monte Carlo process, the height of each of these elementary domains is allowed to change as well as their crystallographic orientation. After equilibrium is reached at a given numerical temperature, all elementary domains have changed their orientation into the same one and small islands appear, preferentially on the domains of the Penrose lattice located in the center of heptagons. This method is a new numerical approach to study the influence of the substrate and its defects on the islanding process of polycrystalline films.Comment: 9 pages,5 figure

Determinants of Mortality and Disease Progression of Kaposi Sarcoma in a Primary care ART Programme in Khayelitsha, South Africa

CROI 200

A multi-model process for managing project complexity

International audienceDevelopments of large software systems have to face an exponential increase in volume and complexity of the requisite knowledge, tighter time constraints and a continual growing number of stakeholders. Current solutions are based on breaking down the system or software components and equipments in smaller pieces in order to be able to handle them, but the side effect of this approach is to dilute the synthetic vision. This paper presents a model centric process supported by tools. This process is based on a multi-model approach for managing synthetic views and making project information available to all stakeholders, with an appropriate view and presentation

Tunable steady-state domain wall oscillator with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

We theoretically study domain wall oscillations upon the injection of a dc current through a geometrically constrained wire with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The oscillation frequency spectrum can be tuned by the injected current density, but additionally by the application of an external magnetic field independent of the power. The results of analytical calculations are supported by micromagnetic simulations based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. The simple concept of our localized steady-state oscillator might prove useful as a nanoscale microwave generator with possible applications in telecommunication or for rf-assisted writing in magnetic hard drives.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

“I don’t use a condom (with my regular partner) because I know that I’m faithful, but with everyone else I do”: The cultural and socioeconomic determinants of sexual partner concurrency in young South Africans

Finding ways to reduce the high rates of sexual partner concurrency is increasingly believed to be vital to controlling HIV spread in southern Africa. We describe the frequency and correlates of sexual partner concurrency in a representative sample of 3 324 young South Africans aged 14-25. Of the 2 468 individuals who were sexually active 21% had engaged in concurrent sexual partnerships. Multivariate analysis revealed that concurrency was more common with males, Africans, those who knew their partner had anotherpartner, early age of sexual debut, four or more lifetime sexual partners, alcohol consumption, and self-perception of being at high risk for acquisition of HIV. If the respondent’s partner knew his or her friends (termed high structural embeddedness) this was associated with a 52% reduction in concurrency rates. There are significant differences in both the rates of concurrency and the risk factors underpinning these in the different racial/ethnic groups. Analysis of these underlying determinants suggests that cultural rather than socioeconomic factors predominate, which has important implications for the design and targeting of prevention efforts

A Non-parametric Semi-supervised Discretization Method

Semi-supervised classification methods aim to exploit labelled and unlabelled examples to train a predictive model. Most of these approaches make assumptions on the distribution of classes. This article first proposes a new semi-supervised discretization method which adopts very low informative prior on data. This method discretizes the numerical domain of a continuous input variable, while keeping the information relative to the prediction of classes. Then, an in-depth comparison of this semi-supervised method with the original supervised MODL approach is presented. We demonstrate that the semi-supervised approach is asymptotically equivalent to the supervised approach, improved with a post-optimization of the intervals bounds location