BACKGROUND: Optimal care for children with HIV infection includes timely assessment of treatment failure. Using HIV viral load to define treatment failure remains a challenge in resource-limited settings.METHODS: Children with HIV infection who were already on or starting first-line antiretroviral therapy were enrolled and followed over time. We examined clinical and immunologic predictors of viro

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) affects, and claims the lives of, millions every year. Despite efforts to find and treat TB, about four million cases were missed globally in 2017. Barriers to accessing health care, inadequate health-seeking behavior of the community, poor socioeconomic conditions, and stigma are major determinants of this gap. Unfortunately, TB-related stigma remains unexplored in E

BACKGROUND: Previous studies showed higher early mortality rates among patients treated with antiretroviral drugs in settings with limited resources. One of the reasons was late presentation of patients to care. With improved access to HIV services, we expect improvements in disease stage at presentation. Our objective was to assess the effect of improved availability of HIV services on patient pr

Microscopic diffusion anisotropy imaging using diffusion-weighted MRI and multidimensional diffusion encoding is a promising method for quantifying clinically and scientifically relevant microstructural properties of neural tissue. Several methods for estimating microscopic fractional anisotropy (µFA), a normalized measure of microscopic diffusion anisotropy, have been introduced but the differenc

Apolipoprotein E (APOE), one of the primary lipoproteins in the brain has three isoforms in humans - APOE2, APOE3, and APOE4. APOE4 is the most well-established risk factor increasing the pre-disposition for Alzheimer's disease. The presence of the APOE4 allele alone is shown to cause synaptic defects in neurons and recent studies have identified multiple pathways directly influenced by APOE4. How

White quinoa grains were used as a source of novel beneficial microorganisms and as a matrix for development of a fermented plant-based drink. Studies on the quinoa grain microbiota were performed by applying spontaneous fermentation to allow isolation of autochthonous Lactiplantibacillus strains with potential to be used as starter cultures. The quinoa-based drink was fermented with the commercia

We considered the phase coherence dynamics in a Two-Frequency and Two-Coupling (TFTC) model of coupled oscillators, where coupling strength and natural oscillator frequencies for individual oscillators may assume one of two values (positive/negative). The bimodal distributions for the coupling strengths and frequencies are either correlated or uncorrelated. To study how correlation affects phase c

The core of this Doctoral thesis is mainly based in the studies of one-dimensional initial-boundary value problems, which are given by a single non-linear hyperbolic partial differential equation (PDE) with non-convex flux function, or by a system of strongly degenerate parabolic PDEs, for the simulation of sedimentation processes of solid particles immersed in a fluid. Particular attention is pai

Autologous (auto-) or allogeneic (allo-) hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) are accepted treatment modalities for mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Recently, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy received approval for MCL; however, its exact place and sequence in relation to HCT is unclear. The ASTCT, CIBMTR, and the EBMT, jointly convened an expert panel to formulate consensus recommenda

Objective: Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis, a disease that, despite treatment with antibiotics, still is associated with high mortality and morbidity worldwide. Diffuse brain swelling is a leading cause of morbidity in S pneumoniae meningitis. We hypothesized that neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) disrupt cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) transport by the glym

The performance of heritage takes place in prestigious institutions such as museums and archives, in officially sanctioned spaces such as jubilees and public monuments, but also in more mundane, ephemeral and banal cultural practices, such as the naming of phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the countryside. This volume examines the performance of Nordic heritage and the shaping of the ve

Background and purpose: Radiation therapy treatment planning is a manual, time-consuming task that might be accelerated using machine learning algorithms. In this study, we aimed to evaluate if a triplet-based deep learning model can predict volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) dose distributions for prostate cancer patients. Materials and methods: A modified U-Net was trained on triplets, a co