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The prevalence of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) failure is not uniform in India. In this study we attempted to determine the prevalence and risk factors of treatment failure among patients who were on ART for >1y.

We conducted an ambispective study from 2017 to 2019 in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. Patients and their past medical records were examined to determine clinical, immunological and virological failure.

Among 301 enrolled patients, the majority was male (61.8%), with a mean age of 36.98±10.84y. The prevalence of ART failure in our study was 10.63% (32/301). Clinical, immunological and virological failure rates were 1.66%, 10.63% and 5.65%, respectively. The maximum chance of failure was the tenofovir-lamivudine-nevirapine (33.3%) regimen followed by the stavudine-lamivudine-nevirapine (30.4%) regimen. Among the nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, a stavudine-based regimen had a significantly greater chance of failure (25.8%) compared with tenofovir (9.6%) and zidovudine (7.9%) regimens (p<0.005). Low baseline CD4 count and development of tuberculosis after ART initiation were significantly (p<0.05) associated with treatment failure in univariate analysis. Patients with a low peak CD4 count (adjusted odds ratio [AOR 4.26 95% confidence interval <CI> 1.83 to 9.88]) and who developed symptoms after ART initiation (AOR 3.77 [95% CI 1.47 to 9.69]) had significantly higher odds of treatment failure in the multivariate analysis (p<0.001).

Early identification of risk factors by regular follow-up and selection of the proper ART regimen can reduce the rate of treatment failure.

Early identification of risk factors by regular follow-up and selection of the proper ART regimen can reduce the rate of treatment failure.Recently, language representation models have drawn a lot of attention in the natural language processing field due to their remarkable results. Among them, bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) has proven to be a simple, yet powerful language model that achieved novel state-of-the-art performance. BERT adopted the concept of contextualized word embedding to capture the semantics and context of the words in which they appeared. In this study, we present a novel technique by incorporating BERT-based multilingual model in bioinformatics to represent the information of DNA sequences. We treated DNA sequences as natural sentences and then used BERT models to transform them into fixed-length numerical matrices. As a case study, we applied our method to DNA enhancer prediction, which is a well-known and challenging problem in this field. We then observed that our BERT-based features improved more than 5-10% in terms of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and Matthews correlation coefficient compared to the current state-of-the-art features in bioinformatics. Moreover, advanced experiments show that deep learning (as represented by 2D convolutional neural networks; CNN) holds potential in learning BERT features better than other traditional machine learning techniques. In conclusion, we suggest that BERT and 2D CNNs could open a new avenue in biological modeling using sequence information.Pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP) is a highly mucinous adenocarcinoma growing in the peritoneal cavity and most commonly originating from the appendix. Glycans play an important role in carcinogenesis, and glycosylation is altered in malignant diseases, including PMP. We have previously demonstrated that fucosylation of N-glycans is increased in PMP, but we did not observe modulation of overall sialylation. As sialic acids can be attached to the rest of the glycan via α2,3- or α2,6-linkage, we have now analyzed the linkage patterns of sialic acids in tissue specimens of normal appendices, low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasms (LAMN), low-grade (LG) PMP and high-grade (HG) PMP. For the linkage analysis, the enzymatically released acidic N-glycans were first treated with ethyl esterification or α2,3-sialidase digestion followed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Significant increase in the relative abundance of α2,6-sialylated and decrease in α2,3-sialylated N-glycans was observed in PMP tumors as compared to the normal appendices (P less then 0.025). More specifically, increased α2,6-sialylation (P less then 0.05) and decreased α2,3-sialylation (P less then 0.01) were detected in afucosylated and monofucosylated N-glycans of PMPs, whereas the less abundant multifucosylated glycans, containing terminal fucose, demonstrated increased α2,3-sialylation (P less then 0.01). GNE-781 mouse Importantly, the increase in α2,6-sialylation was also detected between PMP and the appendiceal precursor lesion LAMN (P less then 0.01). The identified glycosylation alterations produce ligands for sialic acid-binding immunoglobulin-like lectins (Siglecs) and sialofucosylated glycans binding selectins, which play a role in the peritoneal dissemination and progression of the disease.

This study investigated the behavioral and psychological correlates of strength and balance training (SBT) participation among older African Americans.

A cross-sectional survey of 90 older African Americans (M = 66.7 ± 8.7 years; 70% female) was conducted to assess correlates of intention to undertake SBT exercises and the number of days that they currently engage in SBT. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the threat appraisal of the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) were used as frameworks for the analyses.

The intention to do SBT exercises was positively associated with favorable attitudes and subjective norm, knowledge about the benefits of SBT, and hours worked per week. The frequency of SBT participation was significantly correlated with behavioral intention, high fear of falling, and a low score on the kinesiophobia scale.

This study demonstrated the utility of the TPB and PMT’s threat appraisal construct in modeling intention and number of days of SBT participation among African American in the PMT. Health promotion interventions should consider the interrelationship among these constructs.