235 research outputs found
Maternal Anti-Toxoplasma Treatment during Pregnancy Is Associated with Reduced Sensitivity of Diagnostic Tests for Congenital Infection in the Neonate
Neonatal diagnosis of congenital toxoplasmosis is based on a combination of serological and molecular tests. Maternal screening and treatment differ according to national policies and may impact the sensitivity of diagnostic methods in infants at birth. In this multicenter study, 115 neonates born to 61 treated (53%) and 54 (47%) untreated women were retrospectively included in three centers (France, Serbia, and the United States) to assess the impact of maternal anti-Toxoplasma treatment on the performance of neonatal workup at birth (neosynthesized anti-Toxoplasma IgM, IgA, and IgG and quantitative PCR [qPCR]) using univariate and multivariate approaches. Independently of the time of maternal seroconversion, the serological techniques were impacted differently by maternal treatment. The detection of IgM by immunosorbent agglutination assay (ISAGA) and Western blotting (WB) dropped from 90.7% and 88.2% in untreated neonates to 533% and 51.9% in treated neonates (P lt 0.05), whereas IgM enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and IgA ISAGA were not significantly affected by maternal treatment. A 2-fold reduction in the sensitivity of neosynthesized IgG by WB was also observed in the case of treatment during pregnancy (37.7% versus 82.3%). Interestingly, the effect of treatment was shown to be duration dependent, especially for IgM detection, when the treatment course exceeded 8 weeks, whatever the therapy. The sensitivity of Toxoplasma PCR in blood was also lowered by maternal treatment from 39.1% to 23.2%. These results highlight that anti-Toxoplasma therapy during pregnancy may set back biological evidence of neonatal infection at birth and underline the need for a careful serological follow-up of infants with normal workup.This is the peer-reviewed version of the article: Guegan, H.; Štajner, T.; Bobić, B.; Press, C.; Olariu, R. T.; Olson, K.; Srbljanović, J.; Montoya, J. G.; Đurković-Đaković, O.; Robert-Gangneux, F. Maternal Anti-Toxoplasma Treatment during Pregnancy Is Associated with Reduced Sensitivity of Diagnostic Tests for Congenital Infection in the Neonate. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 2021, 59 (2). [https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01368-20
First Results from The GlueX Experiment
The GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab ran with its first commissioning beam
in late 2014 and the spring of 2015. Data were collected on both plastic and
liquid hydrogen targets, and much of the detector has been commissioned. All of
the detector systems are now performing at or near design specifications and
events are being fully reconstructed, including exclusive production of
, and mesons. Linearly-polarized photons were
successfully produced through coherent bremsstrahlung and polarization transfer
to the has been observed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, Invited contribution to the Hadron 2015
Conference, Newport News VA, September 201
Measurement of Exclusive Electroproduction Structure Functions and their Relationship to Transversity GPDs
Exclusive electroproduction at a beam energy of 5.75 GeV has been
measured with the Jefferson Lab CLAS spectrometer. Differential cross sections
were measured at more than 1800 kinematic values in , , , and
, in the range from 1.0 to 4.6 GeV,\ up to 2 GeV,
and from 0.1 to 0.58. Structure functions and were extracted as functions of for each of
17 combinations of and . The data were compared directly with two
handbag-based calculations including both longitudinal and transversity GPDs.
Inclusion of only longitudinal GPDs very strongly underestimates and fails to account for and ,
while inclusion of transversity GPDs brings the calculations into substantially
better agreement with the data. There is very strong sensitivity to the
relative contributions of nucleon helicity flip and helicity non-flip
processes. The results confirm that exclusive electroproduction offers
direct experimental access to the transversity GPDs.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
Measurement of the neutron F2 structure function via spectator tagging with CLAS
We report on the first measurement of the F2 structure function of the
neutron from semi-inclusive scattering of electrons from deuterium, with
low-momentum protons detected in the backward hemisphere. Restricting the
momentum of the spectator protons to < 100 MeV and their angles to < 100
degrees relative to the momentum transfer allows an interpretation of the
process in terms of scattering from nearly on-shell neutrons. The F2n data
collected cover the nucleon resonance and deep-inelastic regions over a wide
range of Bjorken x for 0.65 < Q2 < 4.52 GeV2, with uncertainties from nuclear
corrections estimated to be less than a few percent. These measurements provide
the first determination of the neutron to proton structure function ratio
F2n/F2p at 0.2 < x < 0.8 with little uncertainty due to nuclear effects.Comment: 6 pages, 3 page
Precision measurements of of the proton and the deuteron with 6 GeV electrons
The inclusive polarized structure functions of the proton and deuteron, g1p
and g1d, were measured with high statistical precision using polarized 6 GeV
electrons incident on a polarized ammonia target in Hall B at Jefferson
Laboratory. Electrons scattered at lab angles between 18 and 45 degrees were
detected using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). For the usual
DIS kinematics, Q^2>1 GeV^2 and the final-state invariant mass W>2 GeV, the
ratio of polarized to unpolarized structure functions g1/F1 is found to be
nearly independent of Q^2 at fixed x. Significant resonant structure is
apparent at values of W up to 2.3 GeV. In the framework of perturbative QCD,
the high-W results can be used to better constrain the polarization of quarks
and gluons in the nucleon, as well as high-twist contributions
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